Brits quail at the thought of eating horse meat, because horses are our friends. Ditto dogs and cats. Not ditto cattle, pigs, sheep, little curly lambs. Mind you, we buy the meat pre-cut in supermarkets so the bits don't look like the animals they once were. But whatever it is/was, it felt fear and possibly pain. Yet of course, having no sense of itself in time, to use Peter Singer's phrase, animals are not aware of a biography curtailed. Does that matter?

The thing about horse is that it has been turning up in burgers and lasagnes, processed, that said they were beef. Criminal or cheeky? If there's a label, the contents ought to match the writing. There's also the worry that meat coming from the USA, which once ran round the race track - the meat not the USA - may contain nasty medication that is no good for human consumers, and may not have been that good for the horses either.

It's all about what is cheap: and processed meat is that, and filling, and convenient, and fattening and some would say, tasty. But that is subjective. If people ate vegetables, and meat only occasionally, the cost might be the same. But they'd have to cook and they don't know how.They might not even have a kitchen to do it in. Many people would say they don't have time, although it's not clear where the time has gone.

So what's going to change? No idea. More inspectors (cut by the Government)? No idea. Though between the Government, Local Authorities, the Food Standards Agency, supermarkets and farmers there's lots of passing the buck. But buck is tasy, isn't it? And healthy. And sadly it all belongs to the Queen.