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Apologies for the non-appearance of yesterday’s blog – I wrote it and then pushed the wrong button (and then spent a lot of time driving on snowy roads).
Is it snowy enough for you? Imagine its impact on wildlife. A week tomorrow it is Big Garden Birdwatch – time to get those bird feeders filled up if they aren’t already.
Let them eat horse? Why is it that we eat cows but not horses? Protect badgers fully but foxes hardly at all? Protect hen harriers fully but crows hardly at all? I can answer the last of those questions but not so easily the first two.
Next Friday evening I am giving a talk at WWT Slimbridge – and you can buy a signed copy of Fighting for Birds too, if you like.
Thank you to my former colleagues in the RSPB for a review of Fighting for Birds on page 87 of Birds magazine. Apparently ‘if you want to understand more of the complexities, including politics, behind the RSPB’s work, this would be a good buy’.
Indeed.
Available from lots of places including Pelagic Publishing and Amazon and many RSPB, WWT and Wildlife Trust visitor centres.
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I’m not sure what all the fuss about horse meat in burgers was all about, surelythere is for worse ingredients to be found in your average burger, still 99% people surveyed said they would never buy another burger in their lifetime suvery carried out by GALLOP 🙂
Nor do I Douglas,
I’ve eaten horse in Sweden, France and probably in Poland, Bulgaria and Spain. Whats all the fuss, its healthier meat than beef, much more worrying was the traces of pork for the religious non christians among us!
I once told a horsey lady of my acquantance I’d knowingly eaten horse, she did not speak to me again for some little while–silly girl. All the great horse cultures of the past on the Eurasian steppes and the plains of North America ate horse.
Not sure how hungry I would have to be to eat badger, fox, hen harrier or crow!
Not seen a harrier yet this year, will have to go to the Blacktoft roost I suspect, damn the grouse industry, they look much more right somehow on a moor.
The cartoon is great as it is so true!
I agree, though I’ve not eaten it lots of people in France do – only the odd comment in the press picked up on the real point, which is not that it was horse meat but that it showed that even the people selling us the food don’t know what’s in it – or possibly don’t care as long as their shelf price is lower than the other supermarkets and their profits higher.
It keeps happening – I wonder why people find it so surprising that some of us don’t trust agri-business to behave responsibly over issues like GM.
How is this connected to agri-business?
It’s another symptom of globalism. I’m a life long omnivore who has not knowingly eaten horse but frankly have to agree it just doesn’t matter that much! Importing food (much of it untraceable) from all corners of the globe is surely a bigger – and more worrying issue. As someone in his late forties I reckon I’m in the last group of people to have been taught basic cooking skills in a state primary school (mid 70’s). I can still cook a wide range of meals from scratch in a very basic kitchen, something many teenagers cannot. Which is sad