A Cow Is A Horse, Of Course, Of Course...

 In case you don’t read the papers, watch TV, listen to the radio or even go outside
much – in which case you’re probably in a coma – there’s been a bit of a furor in the
media about meat products, lately.
 If you have been in a coma*, let me explain the awkward reaction you may have
gotten on waking and saying “I could murder an Aldi lasagne.”
 It turns out that, in these times of financial austerity, more and more people have
been trying to cut corners by frequenting budget supermarkets and buying ready
meals.
 These people were then surprised to learn that, in these times of financial austerity,
budget supermarkets and ready meal manufacturers had been trying to cut corners by
buying their beef from a bloke called Paddy who runs a stable.
 As a result, for a good while now, we’ve all been eating “beef” made of horses.
 The press, as sober reflectors of the zeitgeist, have reacted with calm and decorum,
before remembering their remit and proceeding to go absolutely clownshit insane
about the whole thing.
 Far be it from me to be the voice of sobriety (in any sense) but isn’t horse meat
actually better for us, on aggregate?
 In the 20 years since the panic died down, it’s worth remembering just what the BSE
scare was all about.
 Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, to use the full name, is part of a terrifying group
classed as “Prion Diseases.”
 Prions are small clumps of protein which, when introduced to an animal’s system,
proceed to bore termite-like holes in the brain.**
 If infected meat from these animals is then consumed by humans, the result is new-
variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, which is far more terrifying. It’s one thing to have
an animal that’s known for dribbling and mooing get sick, but when a functional
human being gets sick and starts dribbling and mooing, you know we’re in trouble.
 CJD is basically all the worst bits of Alzheimers, epilepsy and schizophrenia, and is
mercifully fatal in most cases within a year.
 Prions, for the record, aren’t alive like viruses or bacteria. As a result, they can’t be
killed, and there is no treatment. They just float around your system, make holes in
your brain and kill you.
 Horse, meanwhile, doesn’t tend to cause any of these problems.
 BSE/CJD/Prion disease is often linked to recycled meat entering the food chain.
Before the BSE outbreak, cows were given feed containing ground up sheep
carcasses, for example. Certain Pacific Rim tribes known for cannibalism were also
often susceptible to prion disease. Too much meat really can be bad for you, although
perhaps a more suitable adage might have be “stop feeding sheep’s brain to those
cows” or, as my old mum used to say, “stop murdering your neighbours and chewing
their spinal columns.”
 Still, the only part of the horse “scandal” that seems valid is the concern that, as we
had no idea we were eating horses, we may not know what was in those horses at the
time of slaughter.
 As I’ve often said, laziness and incompetence will save us all, and this is a perfect
example.
 The whole reason for the horse-passed-off-as-beef trick was the high price of meat.
 Nobody in their right mind would have been feeding horses other livestock anyway,
but even someone in their wrong mind would soon have found it prohibitively
expensive. Simply because the horse was the cut-price option, it virtually guarantees
that it was raised on a grass-based diet.
 Not that I ultimately give a shit, anyway, of course. I have no moral objection to
eating any animal and a straw poll of people I know reveals much the same opinion
all around.
 Granted, most of the people I associate with are known for throwing suspiciously
cheap dinner parties, and are legally prohibited from ever running a cattery, but still,
most people don’t seem too bothered about eating horse.
 And if you are bothered, I recommend the new Aldi line of Burke & Hare vegetarian
dinners. They’re better than Lecter’s Own over at Tesco, and cheaper than Sweeney
Todd’s at Asda.
 Also, they’re perfect for when you have a large number of people around for kebabs.
 Y’know.
 A Donner Party.

*About 80% of my readers have suffered severe head trauma in the past, so it’s likely.

**It's actually a result of the proteins mis-folding and causing other to do the same, but I'm not writing a hard science blog, here. Piss off and bother Brian Cox if you don't want simple analogies. (And while you're at it, tell him he was very good in "X-Men 2.")