Horse meat scandal unleashes rampant xenophobia

Until yesterday evening, certain sections of the British press and some politicians were articulating the horse meat in processed food scandal as, quintessentially a problem with ‘Johnny Foreigner’.

The French, Spanish, 'Italian and Polish Mafia', 'Cypriot entrepreneurs’ and of course, the Romanians were all named as part of the 'foreigner' problem. The Romanians would come under special attack not least because the xenophobic debate about the ‘possibility of one million Romanians coming to this country next year', has in some quarters, reached fever pitch

Writing about the horse meat scandal, Daily Mail columnist  Richard Littlejohn, seemed to have his Christmas come ten months early as he gorged himself lambasting anything foreign:

What we’ve ended up with is ‘authentic Italian ragu, just like mama used to make’ mass-produced in a factory outside Rotterdam, and ‘beef’ burgers and lasagna made from dodgy Romanian horse flesh.

Funny how the EU can enforce strict food hygiene regulations, which prevent the Women’s Institute selling jam in second-hand jars but can’t stop Eastern European horsemeat being passed off as beef.”

Sadly, Littlejohn is not alone. Dr Tim Stanley writing in The Telegraph stated that it is both:

‘immoral and un-British to eat a horse’.

But by yesterday evening, the xenophobic -this couldn’t happen here-jamboree, was found to be occurring in at least two abattoirs in England and Wales.

The Food Standards Agency raided abattoirs in West Yorkshire and West Wales, which would mean that horse meat had been found in processing plants in England, Wales and the original source of the scandal, Ireland, in the last two weeks alone.

But it is these latest revelations that clearly suggest that no country is immune from a global food processing meat market which appears easy to corrupt. And like most corruption, greed and profit has no respect for sovereign borders.

It's sad then with such an important issue, which all concerned want dealt with, that rampant xenophobia plays a central part in the current narrative.

As I was driving to work listening to the radio LBC, presenter Nick Ferrari, stated in a judgmental tone, out of the blue, whilst discussing illegal cross contamination of different meats:

‘Do you know how many horses China slaughters? . I’ll tell you right after the break’.

It’s a bit like those cultures and beliefs which hold the cow sacred, stating in a moral tone, ‘do you know how many cows the UK slaughters every year…?

We have not heard the last of this meat fiasco. There’ll be more shocking revelations about what is in our food chain with links both here and abroad. Along with the revelations, sadly we’ll have to expect more of the same bigotry we’ve come to read in our newspapers and listen to over the airwaves.

Simon Woolley