In light of the recent findings of horse meat in frozen meat products in the EU I thought I expand on the subject of is it better knowing what we are eating or not knowing; thus assuming that there isn’t certain health risks associated with either option. (Horse meat in the EU has been deemed as providing no health risks to eaters). In regards to the case of horse meat in the EU the outrage that erupted after the mislabelling of meat was unveiled seemed to arise due to people being deceptively tricked into eating “pretty lovely” horses. The concern was about deception, people assuming they were eating cow when really they were eating horse. At the end of the day though when there are no health side affects felt by the consumer does it really matter that they didn’t know what they were eating?

After having traveled back and forth to Asia due to my parents careers growing up and being exposed to cultures that feast on various animals not commonly eaten in North America I found that I was better off not knowing what animal was bbqed, deep fried, or cooked in soup and was lying in front of me. All matters aside all forms of meat taste relatively the same. But once I saw the chef bringing out an entire duck on a platter, or that my beef was actually dog, or finding the snake’s head in my hot and sour soup I was turned off from eating whatever meal was before me. It came down to that I had been socialized into eating animals that were deemed appropriate kinds of meat- pig, cow, chicken, turkey. It wasn’t the norm to eat dogs as dogs were basically family members and you just don’t eat your family. You wouldn’t eat a duck cause they are the harmless cute animals swimming in the lake outside of your house. Back to the mislabelling case, are we really upset that we are eating horse because it goes against the norms of what animals are deemed appropriate for eating and those groups of people who constructed those norms tricked us into acting against them? Cause they didn’t know at first that they were eating horse meat, and at first they weren’t too concerned that they were.