Get over it. A vegetarian view on the horsemeat scandal

Ten years ago I decided to quit meat. The reasons were fairly high minded - I thought it would be cheaper, easier and attractive to girls.

Okay, there was also the rejection by my 18-year-old self of what I saw as the anaesthetisation of our society towards the whole process of consumption - which I hoped would be appealing to women.

So when it turns out that many of us have been scoffing down a little ‘Dobbin’ with our ‘Daisy’, my view is along the lines of ‘Get over it - what’s the difference?’

After all, horsemeat is incredibly nutritious, cheap and, I’m told, easy to cook. It’s popular in France, Mexico and Central Asia, and the top eight countries consume about 4.7million horses a year.

The idea that horsemeat should be taboo in the UK is due to the heightened cultural status of the animal and nothing more.

We see them as pets, and because of this we are quick to bestow personalities upon them.

If you add to this cultural icons such as Black Beauty, Mr. Ed and the Uffington White Horse, then the picture is clearer - it’s difficult to see cows or pigs getting this much positive PR. Horse racing is another example - these immensely valuable animals have dozens of column inches dedicated to them.

After all, there are no punditry jobs for horses.

So we should feel no additional sentimentality for these herbivores. Yes, they appear to be more intelligent than their bovine compatriots, but this is little more than a kind of animal eugenics that displays a moral inconsistency in the wider carnivorous society. The fact that people have been horrified by the horsemeat scandal actually proves the point raised in the second paragraph.

Because we are anaesthetised.

People demand cheap products and don’t expect quality to suffer. We’re hypnotised by branding and don’t want to consider what actually goes into the product. It’s a side effect of mass consumption that should surprise no-one but alarm everyone, and I for one hope this scandal will jolt people into thinking a little more about what they eat.

If you don’t have the stomach to kill your dinner, it’s probably worth asking yourself if you could eat something else instead. And I don’t buy into this whole blame game that seems to be playing out regarding the scandal - claiming it is the fault of farms in Eastern Europe, or the Food Standards Authority or supermarkets themselves.

The choice lies with the consumer - you are what you eat, after all.