Who Will Be The First To Market Horse Meat Openly In The UK?

The horse meat scandal keeps rumbling on, I see.

There seems to be one aspect, though, which appears to have been mostly avoided in all the coverage I have read, seen or heard. That being the legality of horse meat being sold in the UK.

We've heard many a statement along the lines of "there is no safety issue" which could be translated as "it's OK, bovines, we've been scaring you about food for years but this isn't the apocalypse we've been priming you to panic about", but unless I missed it no-one is saying that horse meat sales in the UK are illegal. Considering it is freely available in France and Belgium, and we are part of this huge 27 nation conglomerate of homogenous legislation, I am guessing there is no bar on selling horse meat in this country.

What a business opportunity for one of our more risk-comfortable food entrepreneurs, then eh?

Being in business myself, our office did jovially kick around a hypothetical scenario whereby we could take the 350,000 horse meat lasagnes off of Findus's hands and make a quick profit on resale elsewhere but - transport problems aside as we are well sorted there - it was the doubtless endless other EU regulations which would make the deal impossible.

Business Week have asked the question "what's so bad about horse meat anyway?" only to be met with the most hysterical of answers.

People have such strong views on eating horses as an ethical issue.
Well, how about eating babies? 

But that’s so different.
There you go. You don’t think horses are like babies, but maybe some people do. How about dogs?

Dogs, you say? I remember writing about that once.

So is it merely repugnance which stops horse meat being sold in this country? Well, that should be far less of an obstruction now that horse meat has been debated to destruction in the media lately.

Even a BBC Radio 5 phone-in a week or so ago - where you'd expect much tear-soaked 'think of poor old Dobbin' kind of argument - was mostly populated by objections from those angry about intensive agriculture and packaging methods rather than an abhorrence for horses being sold for human consumption. Almost without exception, the (middle class and firmly righteous Labour) callers had all travelled the world and tasted horse meat themselves with no objection. Most even stated that it was very tasty, it was just the labelling from those nasty Big Food companies they despised.

It's also extremely good for health compared with our usual fare, which we are all told is the most important thing in the world nowadays.

Curiosity about horse meat has been cranked up to eleven by all this publicity. The advertising has been paid for by others, all that's needed now is for a business to step in, start selling horse meat nationally and reap the profits. Even if the first take-up is a small provincial butcher, the media attention will be huge and he/she is guaranteed to sell out.

Some opposed to the idea have been clever enough to sense a threat, with a Facebook group already set up to stop horse meat sales which aren't happening yet. They should do soon, though, or else I'd be getting worried about the British entrepreneurial spirit which has helped us to punch above our relative tiny size on the global markets for centuries.

A gastro-pub around five miles from Puddlecoteville lists kangaroo steak as a staple menu item. No-one appears too bothered as it has been consumed happily there for at least three years - apart from meerkat or penguin, there can't be too many more cutesy overseas animals. So I don't see too much of a problem with horse, merely an opportunity for the person or company brave enough to speculate to accumulate.

So who will be first to market horse? And, more importantly for me on a personal level, who will go on to sell prime Romanian donkey as I haven't tried that yet.

Where Did That Come From?

I must admit to have been comprehensively blind-sided by the BBC today. An early morning smartphone sift of their stories pulled up an article on e-cigs, it wasn't half bad, either.

BBC Breakfast later featured a three minute video slot - unhelpfully not embeddable, as usual - followed by conversation between Susanna Reid and reporter Graham Satchell (I can't remember the other presenter's name for obvious reasons) during which he volunteered an interesting revelation.

Graham Satchell on Breakfast says use of E-cigs is allowed in BBC buildings :)
— Dick Puddlecote (@Dick_Puddlecote) February 11, 2013

Both articles did, sadly though, feature serial prohibitionist Vivienne Nathanson of the BMA spouting her usual nonsense ...

"I would either take them off the shelves or I would very heavily regulate them so that we know the contents of each e-cigarette were very fixed," says Dr Nathanson.

... which Jay has rightly called out as 'evil'. This, remember, from a woman who has already been caught out blatantly lying on the BBC in the past.



However, despite the inclusion of Nathanson, the BBC deserve a rare pat on the back for raising the issue so prominently. Perhaps, since Mondays are generally slow for news, it will be swiftly forgotten tomorrow now they can get their salaried secularists onto the Pope resigning, but a pat on the back is still perfectly in order nonetheless.

What is baffling me, though, is why? Why did the BBC feel that this was an issue deserving of such coverage? What's the angle?

As we know, their standard for health articles is to pick a press release and paraphrase it. But there doesn't appear to have been one in this case.

If Satchell had linked it in to the appalling Tobacco Products Directive and the resignation of John Dalli, it would make more sense, but he didn't. There was not a mention of Dalli's absurd proposals or of what is promising to be a Europe-wide campaign against them.

Perhaps it was just an excellent - and far too rare - piece of observational health journalism from Graham Satchell, I dunno. The BBC is the stopped clock that is sometimes accurate when wound by the right people, after all.

But, sadly, I'm wondering if it all might be far more depressingly simple. It was only last month that ASH produced an updated press briefing on e-cigs [opens in pdf] which was largely positive, and its contents are uncannily similar to the points raised in the BBC's coverage, as well as the comments made by Satchell in BBC Breakfast's studio this morning.

While it is great that the BBC are reporting on e-cigs - and also commendable that ASH UK are not replicating the fuckwittery towards them exhibited by their counterparts in other nations - a marshalling of the state-funded media by state-funded anti-smokers would still seem to be the status quo.

Canadian Minimum Pricing Advocate Is A Serial Bullshitter

Dr Tim Stockwell is a Canadian with a bit of a beef about alcohol. You may remember that he was behind the BBC's heroic claims about minimum pricing earlier this week.

Snowdon described it as "lying with statistics".

It is a bald-faced lie to say that there have been any "significant changes in alcohol-related deaths observed in British Columbia".

Well, via Crampton, it appears this was no fluke. Stockwell turns out to be a serial abuser of evidence and data.

Despite the absurd contortions he was forced to perform in order to reach a pre-determined result on minimum pricing, he has gone on record criticising other researchers who found that moderate consumption of alcohol is largely beneficial.

[...] in a letter to Addiction, he keeps wondering if it's possible ever to derive any evidence of protective benefits from population epidemiological studies because of potential uncontrolled confounding.

His targets have responded by pointing out that Stockwell really should take that plank out of his eye before accusing others.

[...] we sense a desire by some in the field to apply tough standards on protective effects and more lenient standards on other effects, where sometimes the responses to very simple survey questions such as ‘Did your partner’s alcohol consumption contribute to your marriage problems?’ are accepted as causal evidence.

So, it appears he doesn't just lie with statistics. He also lies by emphasising research - however dubious - which agrees with his agenda, while dismissing other research - however strong - which doesn't.

Another dangerous, dishonest crank gets through the BBC's {cough} rigorous, {cough} world-respected health team, then.

E-Cigs: Follow The Money

With a tagline of "when caution can kill", former ASH Director Clive Bates has written another very intelligent - and important - article on e-cigs and the unintelligent EU's disgraceful plan to kill them off.

"E-cigarettes represent an amazing market-based, user-driven public health insurgency. From nowhere to €500m in Europe, the market is growing rapidly and already almost equals the market for NRT, according to the European Commission’s consultants (see chart and Matrix report p21)"

Little wonder, then, that big pharma are doing everything in their power to get them banned.

"Without anyone in the professional public health field doing anything and without spending any public money, smokers have been quitting, switching and cutting down using e-cigarettes."

And that is why the tobacco control industry are also doing their utmost to heavily regulate them or render them ineffective.

It's a simple follow the money exercise. Right there is all you need to know about the e-cigs debate. Remember it whenever you read or hear any of their rotten junk science.

It's never been about health, you know.

Do go read Clive's article in full here.

UPDATE: From the comments. "Cancer Research UK continues its remorseless promotion of cancer by pretending that nothing is known, when in fact we know that none of the toxins present in cigarette smoke is present in vapour in any meaningful concentration."

This is, of course, the CRUK with half a billion income and 30+ individuals pulling in a yearly salary of over £100k. I do believe they have some links with pharmaceutical companies. Just saying.

Link Tank 09/02

The weekly selection is now into a fourth year involving over 1,500 links.

E-cigarettes are not your father’s smokes

Some charitable institutions are a lot more interested in government hand-outs than our good

Pregnant women who smoke are easy targets for the morality police

Australian McDonald's offers waiter service, plates and cutlery

Hey NSPCC, when a parent smacks his child, it is not 'violence'

Using beer to generate electricity, and then using that electricity to brew more beer

"The anti-Big Food story suits the outlook of a certain kind of middle-class food campaigner"

It's finally legal for women to wear trousers in France

Watching porn boosts support for same-sex marriage

Drink diet mixers, get drunk quicker

Talking ants

New Zealand Public Rejects Plain Packaging

So, we've seen half a million oppose plain packaging in the UK against just under 60% fewer in favour.

But, there has been a consultation on the same hideous policy in New Zealand too, if you remember. It was run on carbon copy lines to ours but there were early signs that things might not be going to plan there either.

A month after consultation on its plain packaging regime for cigarettes closed, the Ministry of Health will not say how many submissions it received. 

The government has agreed in principle to introduce plain packaging laws for tobacco products, subject to the outcome of a consultation process. 

Yet the October 5 deadline for submissions passed unannounced, suggesting the number received in opposition could be huge.

That was four months ago, but here's the latest news from government owned national broadcaster TV New Zealand.

Indeed, this is so. The NZ government has just revealed that - despite a state-funded campaign in favour - responses received on the spiteful idea were almost 60% against.

The TVNZ reporter seems to think we should be surprised by this. I mean, doesn't everyone know by now that if any policy bashes smokers it is a good thing?

He also mentions something else which is quite revealing.

"The association representing convenience retailers [claim] some of those submissions supporting plain packaging were made multiple times by the same person" 

Hmm, sounds familiar. I believe we saw the same principle with the UK consultation, didn't we?

"You can only vote once on each petition, but I would seriously doubt that there will be cross checking between charity petitions so it may be worth signing all of them to get your money's worth"

So, perhaps it wasn't only the UK template for campaigning they copied, then.

Minimum Alcohol Pricing Folly: Goodbye Clubcard And Nectar Points

The more one looks into the implications of minimum alcohol pricing - and I've only just started - the more of a sinister minefield it turns out to be.

By minefield, I mean a legislative nightmare as well as unnecessary costs to small businesses (odd that; aren't Tories supposed to like them?). For example, signage will be required; stock may have to be removed from sale and renegotiated on price with suppliers (more on that another time); and many products will cease to be profitable, not only for the retailer, but for the producer too. This will inevitably lead to an increase in your shopping bill somewhere along the line, whether booze is bought or not.

Current advice from retail bodies is to err on the side of caution or face crippling fines. And that's where you come in because, if you buy drink responsibly, you will still lose out.

When you go to Tesco, Sainsbo, whatever, do you get loyalty card points on tobacco? No, course not, it's bad for you, right, so it's banned. Well, hey presto! With minimum alcohol pricing, this is exactly the result that is likely to happen for alcohol too.

Firstly, if you buy a minimum alcohol priced bottle of wine for around £4.20, those four Clubcard/Nectar points you earn will represent a subsequent value, however small. If you were then to redeem that value, the saving technically drops the cost of your bottle below the minimum price. It is most certainly the end of vouchers before Valentine's Day offering 50 bonus points if you buy a bottle of Baileys, that's for sure.

There is also the issue of saving vouchers or points up for other special occasions. If, like me, you hoard your rewards for a big blow out at Christmas, you could end up buying - say - £100 worth of alcohol and redeeming vouchers/points for £80, for example. That means you are buying alcohol - any alcohol - well beneath the minimum price.

It's a grey area, but retailer associations are advising that the best course is to not award loyalty bonuses to purchases of alcohol at all. Why devise an complicated system to get round the problem when it is easier just to exclude alcohol entirely, eh?

Tesco, of course, are 100% behind minimum pricing so will happily deprive you of your Clubcard points. Others will almost be, I dunno, "nudged" into it by people who have been asking for exactly that for a long time.

Dr Brian Keighley, chairman of the BMA in Scotland, said stopping UK supermarkets offering loyalty points would at least send the "right message". 

"Most alcohol bought for consumption is from supermarkets. There is a need to send the right message on drinking behaviour by not allowing 'rewards' for buying alcohol."

Minimum alcohol pricing is touted as tackling irresponsible drinkers but - as a sage website bluntly asks - why should responsible drinkers pay more?

Of course, if the true plan is to move towards a policy of denormalisation of alcohol, it's just dandy.