Following on from the horse meat scandal in Europe, Germany's development minister, Dirk Niebel, has caused outrage by suggesting that instead of destroying millions of tons of perfectly edible horse/cow meat, that these processed meals be given free to the poor and hungry in Germany. The Green Party condemned the suggestion, saying that Niebel would never put the food on the Parliament's menu. Socialist party Die Linke said that the poor should not become the "garbage disposal unit" of the country. Spokesman for German Catholic Bishops, Matthias Kopp, said on Friday the idea was insulting to those in need and that "everyone in need must receive minimum quality standards." On the other hand, the Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD), has backed the proposal: "We as a Church find the throw-away mentality in our society concerning. How and whether to distribute the products in question would have to be examined." A lot of people here don't seem to mind what it is, as long as they know. It is, after all, a case of fraud not health and safety. There's a small risk that the horse meat was contaminated by a harmful kind of painkiller, but that has not been detected in any of the samples tested so far, and so remains purely speculation for now. For me, to offer it to poor people as an alternative to going hungry seems a better use of the food than simply dumping it because people don't want to eat horse when they buy beef.
"You wouldn't put McDonalds on the Parliament's menu, would you?!" "Well, no, but..." "THEN FUCK YOU" As long as it's safe to eat, who cares? Beef mixed with horse meat probably sounds a whole lot better than starving to the homeless.
Here's a BBC article for reference since banquo apparently doesn't like threads to be contaminated by links.
If so, it should be labeled as such. Which is what the actual issue is; from the link that Raife helpfully provided: Well no, it shouldn't. You shouldn't lie to people about what's in their food, period, and to expect poor people to be grateful for whatever scraps they get is insulting. The concerns about the horse meat itself are probably stupid and wasting food while people are going hungry is obviously bad, but the solution is not to just forgo labeling to trick poor people into eating something they might not otherwise. By the way, we already have labeling problems that need to be addressed. We don't need new ones too.
I have mixed feelings on that. On the one hand: perfectly good food! (Assuming that they do enough testing to be damn sure it's not contaminated.) Why waste it? It's not that different from donating day-old bakery products to food banks and so forth; the food's still good, but can't be sold as being the Ideal Substance, so it still gets used. On the other hand: yeah, it is kinda insulting to turn to the poor, who get shit on most of the time anyway, and say, "Look! Stuff that absolutely no one else is willing to take! It's all yours. Now be grateful." Maybe the best option would be to offer it for free through food banks, clearly marked, so that those who want it for free can have it, but no one feels like they're being forced to eat something they distrust/dislike because it's all they'll be offered.
Oh, there's no doubt it should be labeled correctly. That wasn't my point. And no, I did not mean it as an insult to the poor, instead, I think they should be allowed to eat it if they want and if not, that's cool. What bugs me is the Catholic Church straight up saying "YOU wouldn't eat that, but you'd give it to the poor? That INSULTS them." It was too blanket of a statement for me. Back to my original analogy, Trump may eat Beluga caviar tonight, but I'm not. I can't afford $4000 for a pound of the stuff. Should I not be allowed access to something cheaper like Wendy's or McDonalds? Trump may never eat their food, but I'd be insulted if I had to go hungry because those restaurants were unavailable and my only option was caviar. I should have been a bit more clear in that respect.
Isn't that the way of things anyway? People rich enough to eat at Michelin starred restaurants aren't going to be eating these mislabeled value ready meals anyway - only the less well off do that. All that's being said is that the poor get the opportunity to take up these meals if the supermarkets can't find a way of selling them. It's no different to the common green and left wing demand that supermarkets give their less than perfect vegetables to the poor instead of dumping them in the trash. Despite living in a socialist utopia, I regularly see the homeless in Frankfurt slurping the remains of yesterday's McDonald's Flurry that they've snatched from the trash. I think they'd be better off eating some horse/cow meat lasagne than that.
No worries; I meant that the suggestion on the part of the jackass in the quote was insulting, not you. This all makes sense but it doesn't seem like that's the issue at stake. Seems like horsemeat is already legal to be sold for human consumption and the problem of utilizing it as a resource for the hungry is a logistical one. The guys saying "screw it, let's just trick people into eating it" are doofuses and the people saying 'oh no humans can't eat horse meat!" are also doofuses. Hopefully there are some smart people at lower levels and the issue won't be decided by either set of blowhards.
I don't think anyone is suggesting we trick the poor into eating horse meat by pretending it's beef. Where did you get that idea? The problem is that the food has been mislabeled, it's become a scandal, and the hysteria has resulted in people refusing to eat perfectly edible food. It's not like horse meat is some taboo in Germany like it is in England. Horse meat is eaten here, you can even find horse butchers (Pferdemetzgereien) in many towns and cities. I'm surprised they don't just try selling it at a discount, because I know quite a few people who couldn't care less about horse meat in their lasagne, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some legal issue that prevents that.
The solution to people going hungry is to give them jobs where they can afford to buy their own food, or cash to do it if they can't work for some reason. Giving scandal cast-offs to them trying to "help" is insultingly degrading and does nothing to solve the problem. What next, "slightly" radioactive meat? Slightly rotten food from the warehouse? Even if you postulate that the food is perfectly safe, which I doubt it is, it still has social taint on it. By contrast, as you say, if they'd just repackaged it and sent it to Germany, clearly labeled and at a heavy discount, and let people make their own decisions, no one would have cared much, because it wouldn't be a slap in the face.
The objective here is not to solve social problems. It's to feed the hungry. I'm sure you can understand the difference between food that has been properly relabelled as containing horse meat and radioactive/rotten food, as can everyone else. Being fed by a charity already has social taint on it, horse meat or not. As much as I'd love to see a tin of Beluga caviar get yanked from under Trump's nose and given to some homeless person that's not going to happen because, hey, the world is a shitty place much of the time. Being homeless and poor is one big continuous slap in the face in the first place. I fail to see the point in starving them out of principle.
Yeah, way to put up a strawman, Jason. Rotten/radioactive food is not what we're talking about, this is not a slippery slope, and they just want to get the mislabeled meat to people that probably really, really need it. And... stop. I thought about reading into it more, but as far as I can tell, there's no further slope to slide down outside of this incident. I mean, come on dude, I know you're better than bullshit strawmen like "slightly radioactive meat" etc. Don't go there.
Which is what already happens to a great amount in Germany as far as I'm aware, but there's always a minimum of people who fall off the grid. Even in the utopiest of socialist utopias would in practice have homeless and/or starving people, or people who barely make ends meet. I don't really see the problem with donating this food to food banks, clearly labled as said. I think anyone suggesting that the development minister wants to keep the food mislabled has it wrong, it's quite obviously an awkward phrasing and quite possibly not entirely correct in translation. I mean come on, I seriously doubt Niebel suggests to keep the meat labled as beef. And another thing, this food being available for the poor does not mean people get it force-fed or anything. If it's available at food banks it's still an option they could take, not have to take. As a super left socialist I get the objections, but I think the need for this food to be in food banks outweighs the problems. On Schiphol, the biggest airport in the Netherlands, they have to 'dispose' of geese who might form a danger. These geese are then processed to be given to food banks. In an interview on a newsprogram one of the volunteers at the food bank said that this meat is very welcome for some people. They could just as easily sell it in supermarkets (a lot of people wouldn't see a problem with it), but distributing it like this is a better solution (not a solution for structural societal problems, but a solution for "What to do with all this meat???") imo.
If you don't eat your horse, you can't have any pudding! How can you have your pudding if you don't eat your horse?!
Homeless people sure don't like social taint in their horse burgers. What's really, really fucking insulting is you suggesting the rich white people who are now holding this food have a moral obligation to poor people to throw it away because of the guilt they should be feeling for even suggesting that it go to the homeless. That's pathetic. "We can't give you this free food, we're better than that!"
Didn't Burger King come out recently and say they put horse meat in their burgers...? And it's not like they closed down or people stopped going because some people are comfortable with the concept of eating horse meat. That said, if I put myself into the shoes of someone that is homeless or in need, I would greatly appreciate anything. Pride is a good thing to have, but I would not consider myself too good for food of any kind when I am starving and potentially have a family. Personally, I think it'd be a good idea to go to those in need and be like "hey, we have this meat here and we want to know if you wanna eat it. it's horse meat, but...you know, it's still meat. it's good, not spoiled or anything, some other people just aren't into the idea of eating a horse. so do you want it?"
No. What they said was that they found out that one of their meat suppliers (for their UK and Ireland restaurants) was implicated in this horse-meat-mixing scandal, and they dropped that supplier.
You see here we have left leaning and environmentalist politicians rightly pressuring supermarkets to donate their "surplus" produce to food banks. Now "surplus" is largely just a polite word for "food that nobody else wants". It's the bruised fruit, yesterday's bread and the ready meals that are past their "best before" date. Like the horse meat lasagne they can't sell it to sniffy people with money in their pocket, but those without money will gladly take the extra nutrition. So why is there a special problem with mislabeled food which is perfectly safe to eat? You'd think the same people would be shouting at the supermarkets for even thinking of destroying the food rather than giving it away to the needy. Firstly it's wasteful and damaging to the environment - all that dumped food will have to be replaced from another source. Secondly it means that the poor will have less food to eat, which is shameful. And what's the only reason for doing that? So that the non-poor don't have to feel bad about giving less than perfect food to the needy? Come on that's bullshit.
There's very little in the way of actual hunger in developed countries. Housing, safety, healthcare, and other important services are definitely in short supply. People actually suffering from actual starvation and malnutrition, though? To the extent that it happens in developed countries, it's neglect of children by parents who have other major problems. Meeting people's calorific needs is cheap and it's one of the first things that even the most rudimentary social safety net takes care of. So... what that means in terms of the mountains of horse lasagna sitting in coolrooms in Europe I don't quite know. I hate the idea of wasting food, especially food that has absolutely nothing wrong with it except that it's mislabelled. OTOH, giving it to Europe's poor is not actually the solution to a real and pressing problem. On the face of it, we'd hope it'd be one of those happy Sesame Street co-operation situations where two people's problems solve each other, but it's really more similar to the scenario described by Die Linke; poor people being used as garbage disposal units. Here's my unrealistic fantasy-solution; parcel it all up and send it to China. Their food safety standards are terrible, and this stuff would, relatively speaking, be a step up for consumers there. More realistically: *shrug*. I'm not seeing any clear conclusions to jump to.
At least we can be sure that the horse meat will just sit long enough to spoil while our "developed" countries argue for weeks about what to do with it in a way that doesn't expose anyone to lawsuits.
As long as it's labelled correctly, and hasn't sat out and started the putrefaction process, why wouldn't it be acceptable to donate? As banquo pointed out, continental Europe in general has little issue with horse meat as a food; spent some time in Italy, and walking around the towns you'd pass butchers who specialized in horse. I used to work at a Borders Books & Music, and when I'd randomly get assigned to the cafe I would wonder what would happen to all the day old food. One day I asked; apparently, they can't donate it to shelters or food banks, so it gets tossed in the trash. I don't know if that was corporate policy tied to liability concerns, but that's how Borders worked. Panera is different; they actually have a corporate policy where they donate all of their unsold baked goods at days end. A lot of shelters also have strict rules against accepting anything "stale"; for example, here's a rather large NYC initiative which specifically states that stale/hard baked goods are unacceptable. Bagels are hard after sitting out for 4 hours...so...yeah.
If it doesn't really exist, why do charities push for supermarkets to donate their less than perfect produce to food banks rather than dump it in landfills? What's the difference between donating a ready meal that people won't buy because it's past its "best before" date, and donating a lasagne to people won't eat it because of a media driven hysteria over horse meat that many people in Germany happily eat anyway?
Correct me if I'm wrong here, because they don't know it's perfectly safe to eat? It hasn't been established one way or another, near as I can tell. It came through a criminal pipeline, it shouldn't be trusted. There's no way they'd feed it to school children in their lunches, as an analogous example, no matter how much testing they did on it. My original post probably didn't come across as intended. One, there is no shortage of food or money in Germany or any other developed country. We could feed the homeless four-course meals without blinking if we felt like it. This isn't about being nice to the homeless; it's about getting rid of the stuff. Even if you postulate that society was already spending every last cent it wanted to on assistance, well, the assistance budgets were already allocated and food already scheduled for delivery. For the horsemeat to matter, the German assistance would either need to be undertargeting its protein delivery (unlikely) or just flat out not delivering enough food (dunno). Two, a well-meaning bureaucrat probably thought he could get a double win by being "nice" to the homeless and either explicitly or implicitly reducing the outlays. Three, even if they do go down this route they have a moral obligation to be really, really careful with how they handle it. From the perspective of the recipients, not all gifts are equal; scandal-ridden meat smuggled from Mexico is not equivalent to a frozen lasagna a little past its sell-by date. I'm sure everyone involved thought they were doing the right thing, but ugh.
I don't really care how scandal-ridden the meat is. If it's properly labelled, not gone stale, free of antibiotics/other drugs and reasonably nutritious I'd happily feed it to the homeless, school children or eat it myself.
From what I understand they have traced the meat to its source and discovered that it has been fraudulently mislabeled somewhere along its path to the supermarket. Amid the media hysteria there's been talk of possible contamination, but there's no evidence of this. All tests were clear, and this meat has probably now had more tests than any meat in history. It's just horse meat from Romania, another country where they enjoy eating it. It's not high quality, but neither is the beef it replaces. In fact horse meat is usually a little more expensive in Europe. While there shouldn't be a problem feeding everyone in Germany, clearly there is. So what do we do, refuse to give away food until there are no poor in society? In the article I linked to earlier, the charities that are pushing to have supermarkets give their surplus food also want to change the law so that food banks can be free from prosecution for any unintended food poisoning. As with food that is past its sell by date, as with mislabeled beef, there's a risk in less than perfect food. But it's still perfectly edible. The risk is still small enough that environmentalists would want the food given to the poor rather than wasted. So what's the big difference here? Assuming there is no more health risk associated with the food than normal, which current evidence suggests it is, would you still think it wrong to give this food to the poor?
The issue, or at least one of them, is that they don't want to relabel it. Just feed it to the poor as beef.
I don't think it's wrong, I just think unless it's very carefully handled it's insulting to treat the homeless as a cheap disposal vector to get rid of it. I don't know, what was going to happen if the windfall horsemeat hadn't shown up? X people starve, and everyone's apparently a-ok with that?
Having just reviewed the article I got it from (it was a super shitty article, and I refuse to link it here), I learned that the article in fact made the claim without citing sources. I have emailed the editor asking if it was actually sourced or just something they made up. So uh, my bad.
So you also think that the green party's drive to get supermarkets to donate their surplus produce (that would otherwise be dumped in landfills) is also insulting to the poor? See I've long been a supporter of that idea, so when I read the proposal from the German minister my head just translated his idea as the same principle. I've never heard of anyone starving to death in Germany, but there are those who struggle to get all or most of their dietary needs fulfilled. I think poorly nourished might be a better description of the situation. Those who might eat just boiled rice once a week because they've run out of money could replace that with something more substantial.
Well, old produce and baked goods doesn't really make anyone sick, so I don't think they're directly comparable. Ok then; so without the windfall horsemeat X people would be malnourished, and I guess the median German voter was just fine with it?
Old produce includes ready meals past their "best before" dates so I think they are directly comparable. I've also had food poisoning from biscuits and garlic bread before now, so I'm sure it's possible for all kinds of things to make you sick. That's why the charities want to be free from prosecution over food poisoning when dealing with supermarket's surplus - because there's always a risk where food is concerned, especially food getting close to the end of its safety window.
I guess you've got that right then - assuming something else wasn't done to the horsemeat which makes it unusually bad, which I think is a guess at this point. People like Krise who are quite happy to eat food sold under false pretenses that may or may not have something horribly wrong with it are rare. As to the inconsistency, does the German opposition actually favor giving old supermarket food to the homeless? Your link was to UK groups.
Do we know what any homeless people think about this, outside of a highly charged, accusatory political context? Did anybody bother doing a survey or interviews at a soup kitchen or something? If they'd be eating it, I care more about their opinion than I care about the Green Party's.
So when people are saying "the horse-meat isn't contaminated", do they mean that in the sense of "the horse-meat is contaminated" or what? Because they've found bute (Phenylbutazone) in it.
Ha ha ha! Oh, man you had me going for a while there. Well played, sir. Well played indeed. I give you an A-. These were just a bit too thick and too strawman to be believable. Had you kept it going for another half page or so you'd gotten an A+.
I'd be OK with giving out slightly radioactive horsemeat as long as the state provided a free follow-up IV of RadAway as well. (It is funny to hear an American criticize Germany on the quality of their social programs and ideas for improvement though.) My little exposure to this makes me think it is based on accounting rules that may themselves be related to laws concerning the inputs and health codes and how the finished product was produced. I've noticed some places getting clever though; for example Starbucks gives away bags of used coffee grounds here in SF now to customers who ask, and those customers then turn around and use them in home compost piles and gardens. Likewise some places in Sacramento will give you their used fryer oil at the end of the day if you have one of those goofy cars. Both these examples are intermediary products (grounds and fryer oil) and not the final item, so there must be a reason SB can donate its grounds to any Dick or Jane but must "destroy" the biscotti every day. When I worked at the winery, I tried to make the case that they should take unsold wine that QC has deemed expired and, instead of destroying it, use it as input to a new product: wine vinegar. That shit got laughed right off the table despite my early numbers on profitability and such, so maybe the obstacle is just corporate inertia; your Panera example makes me think this might be it.
