Horsemeat found in dishes in Finland, Denmark, Sweden

I thought them Euros would eat anything, like escargot etc..so is horse a taboo??

Meh, meat, is meat, I guess.

This type of incident is what you may well see occur in Japan if TPP is implemented. This is the result of free trade and lax regulations which are driven by consumers demanding ever lower prices. You see people on this site wanting fso called free trade and cheap products, this is the end result and the free trade has not ,made things better except for the elite.

The real point is that if it says Beef on the label and you pay Beef prices you dont expect it to be a knackered winner of the Grand National, it is not the aversion to eating Horse meat. If you buy minced chicken you dont expect to have next door's cat. Horse meat bred for consumption do not get medication given to them by the Vet that would ordinarily be given to the riding/racing horse because some of the vaccines are dangerous for humans. Keeping these drugs out of the human food chain is the real concern.

If anything this might push people back to eating decent food and supporting local producers. Only a few years back some eastern European scumbags mixed used engine oil with food oils that ended up in the processed food chain with the CE rubber-stamp..

I'm all for capitalism but it needs to be controlled with limits put in place as to how big things can get in the interest of the consumer.

Otherwise, this kind of thing happens.

It's made me stop eating meat (apart from fish) - no way am I eating horses. It's like eating pets...

@Hategobo:

...it is not the aversion to eating Horse meat...

With me it is.

Horse meat bred for consumption do not get medication given to them by the Vet that would ordinarily be given to the riding/racing horse because some of the vaccines are dangerous for humans. Keeping these drugs out of the human food chain is the real concern.

They found traces of BUTE in some... so clearly not a horse bred to be eaten.

Horse meat bred for consumption do not get medication

Depends where. The laws about bute vary according to countries, it was allowed without control some years ago. They were widely giving some to cattle and particularly poultry raised for meat, eggs, dairies as the health issue was not known (or not considered). And some countries may still have not banned it yet. It's not a violent poison, but a stuff we should avoid. Whatever, the scale of the cheating is scary, and the scale of cover-up and leniency from State control ever scarier.

so clearly not a horse bred to be eaten.

There are very few, if any, horses bred only to be eaten, they usually serve as both transportation/entertainment/decoration and meat later, so in countries with horse meat habits like France, probably no horse owner would get them treated with bute and local vets would tell them to not do it. In countries like England, it's a but hypocritical as people have horses "pet only", and they will still get them slaughtered and resale the corpse to industry.

It's like eating pets...

I can get that. I don't say for you, but British horse owners are weird no ? Did you resell any of your dead cats, dogs, hamsters ? Well, their problem, not mine. They may think it's for leather, industrial horse oil. OK. They should understand it's likely to be also for pet food, meat flour to feed English beef as they have probably lived in UK at the time of the Mad Cow scandal and that was made clear then. Anyway they don't consider it might be eaten by humans, particularly by themselves, so they just don't care what medicine they give the horse and I don't blame them. The abuse is done by those that buy horses from slaughterhouses, since they know it's a country where the horse might or not have had bute, they should either refrain from all alimentary use or test systematically.

This type of incident is what you may well see occur in Japan if TPP is implemented.

That already occurred, probably occurs... in Japan. Not horse meat maybe, but Fukushima food surely. The weirdest is when they had found sashimi contained pork fat.

When people don't know what they eating that is very disturbing. First we hear about road salt being used in meat processing plants and now horsemeat being used like a beef.