Sea angling boats drawn up on the beach at Rock-a-Nore, Hastings
I don't know why anyone's surprised by the horseburger scandal. As the old saying goes for builders - pay peanuts and you get monkeys. What amazes me most is how anyone has been making anything out of the business at all. In today's Guardian there was reference to no less than five middlemen before the product even reached Findus. You'd have thought the transport costs alone would have obliterated the profit.
When we returned from France I was gobsmacked by the extent of processed food in Hastings supermarkets. Any temptation to get a ready-made Beef Bourguignon for two was removed by a quick scan of the additives on the packet. Now it looks as if it probably isn't even beef. Last week I picked up a packet of what were described as "Venison Burgers" in the supermarket and discovered that they were 20% pork.
In Hastings we have one colossal privilege: the availability of fresh fish, seven days a week. Last week I was experimenting with some Nigella Lawson recipes, and was able to buy fresh squid and local scallops from one of the three fishmongers fifty yards away. This week we had some cod fillet in a recipe we agreed was unnecessarily elaborate, since the fish was so good in its own right.
Meat's expensive in the UK: prices at the excellent butcher we go to in Pett, just outside Hastings, are about 20% more than I would have paid in France. But I know where it's come from, it's not pumped full of chemicals, and not packaged in cardboard and plastic. We eat less of it. Risottos, pasta, couscous and veggies are staple elements of our daily diet. But local fish, in all its forms, is the star ingredient.
Antony Mair
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