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Comment by AlexMuir | Hacker News Reader

HN kicks up an almighty fuss about any attempts to regulate our industry (see online payments, sales taxes, etc.) but we are happy to pass judgement on others.

In Europe we can barely stop people from selling horsemeat as beef. I'm not sure how effectively we are implementing any of these rules, and I'm sure a farmer who wishes to do so can flout them at will.

One positive thing to come from the rise of supermarkets and chains is that their own brands suffer when their suppliers fuck up. They alone have the power to police their producers. And we see this in this article with McD's et al pushing for higher standards.

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> HN kicks up an almighty fuss about any attempts to regulate our industry (see online payments, sales taxes, etc.) but we are happy to pass judgement on others.

In every industry, the people within the industry think that "they're different" and because they're morally upstanding they don't need to be regulated, but all those other fuckers, well they need to be kept in line. On HN you see this very clearly with attitudes towards the tech sector versus the financial sector (meanwhile my non-tech friends wonder why Facebook and Google are allowed to basically stalk you through the internet).

In my view the horsemeat-as-beef scandal demonstrates that the system works and that mislabeled meat gets detected. In this case the meat was perfectly edible, it was just mislabeled.

True in most cases, but there was at least one Dutch company that also mixed rotten meat into its products.

Was it perfectly edible? My understanding of the fiasco is that it was not simply calling horsemeat beef or some other meat. My understanding is that the horsemeat found in packages originated from meat labeled as not for human consumption, meaning that particular horsemeat had not gone through the same safety inspection normally given to meat which is labeled as for human consumption. To me, this seems that the horsemeat might not be perfectly edible.

No it wasn’t – horsemeat if meant for human consumption is edible, but meat from racing horses, for example, isn’t. Those having to dispose of such horses even have to pay the renderer for their service, and this was the real problem here, even though the media tended to get more concerned about ‘HORSE meat!!!!’.

But, as the GP said, this so far seems to be a singular incident of a single producer trying to make an extra profit, which I don’t really think justifies throwing the entire system overboard.

Do we know how long the horsemeat went undetected, though?

If memory serves me correctly, around 6-12 months.

A bit less: http://www.bing.com/search?q=horsemeat+scandal+timeline&... p=-1&sk=

They think it started in August 2012, and it was detected in January 2013...

I don't ingest web applications and startups as the raw source of energy required to sustain my basic bodily functions. Food must be held to a higher standard.

The article is also a little slanted, in that the described only those practices permitted in the US, but banned in the EU.

There are many practices where the reverse is true, such as the manufacture of certain cheeses from non-pasturized milk being permitted in some parts of the EU, which can lead to a number of diseases.

The article is from a publication which wants policy change in the US. I guess they don't care as much for the welfare of us Europeans :)

The example you're using applies to traditional products that otherwise couldn't exist, and who's consumers are well aware that it's made from non-pasturized milk.

That's a completely different issue from your standard supermarket meat of which consumer blindly assume that it's safe.

true, and also: the amount of people eating those cheese is nothing in comparision with the amount of people eating more 'normal' food, like meat.

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