Reply to: Shock! Horror! The "meat" in curry ain't necessarily wot you ordered.

[Qdos Contractor]

On reflection that microchip story does seem rather improbable and variations of it seem to feature on a lot of urban myth websites. I shall never believe anything my friend tells me again.

I did once find no less than six hairs on a single pizza, which were almost certainly of a 'downstairs' variety.

[EternalOptimist]

A friend of a friend, who happens to be a vet, apparently found a microchip in his curry at a place in Leicester. He took it with him and discovered that it belonged to a dog that had been put down by a different vet a few weeks previously. Make of that what you will.

I find it hard to believe that farmers are feeding dead dogs to cows. The sheer logistics of digging them up and removing the collars would make it uneconomical. Pigs , yes. but cows ? no.

[doodab]

I sometimes wonder how chinese restaurants manage to do prawn dishes, which are packed with decent sized king prawns, for £5. The amount of prawns you get, of that size, would often cost nearly £5 from Tesco. And when we've bought said prawns ourselves, they don't tend to be of clearly better quality.

Maybe when you buy meat and seafood by the sackload it just is that much cheaper, or maybe they don't make money on the main dishes but the sides and starters?

Catering sized bags of frozen uncooked prawns are a fair bit cheaper than supermarkets.

I live near a large korean supermarket and a lot of stuff is cheaper than supermarkets in there. Fruit, veg, noodles, meat, even beer.

[formant]

Fair enough - after all once you have dunked it in Vindalloo sauce and fed it to a drunk bunch of yobs who is going to know whether the meat it lamb or cheap beef etc?

Yeah, doesn't surprise me that this sort of thing is fairly common. :-/

[MyUserName]

That, too, is a lot easier and cheaper with generic (low quality) food-meats.
(like using cheap cuts of beef in lamb curry). And a lot less threatening to your business once exposed.

Fair enough - after all once you have dunked it in Vindalloo sauce and fed it to a drunk bunch of yobs who is going to know whether the meat it lamb or cheap beef etc?

[formant]

I was under the impression that the idea was these restaurants were opputunistically obtaining 'bulking agents' like dogs etc to suppliment the meat stores that they had purchased and not that the built their business off them?

That, too, is a lot easier and cheaper with generic (low quality) food-meats.
(like using cheap cuts of beef in lamb curry). And a lot less threatening to your business once exposed.

[MyUserName]

Does it never occur to people that procuring a sufficient and reliable supply of domestic animals like cats and dogs would be considerably more expensive and time-consuming than simply using the supply chain that already exists to get meat from the farm to the kitchen?

Microchips my arse. What a load of bollocks

I was under the impression that the idea was these restaurants were opputunistically obtaining 'bulking agents' like dogs etc to suppliment the meat stores that they had purchased and not that the built their business off them?

[Sysman]

I sometimes wonder how chinese restaurants manage to do prawn dishes, which are packed with decent sized king prawns, for £5. The amount of prawns you get, of that size, would often cost nearly £5 from Tesco. And when we've bought said prawns ourselves, they don't tend to be of clearly better quality.

Maybe when you buy meat and seafood by the sackload it just is that much cheaper, or maybe they don't make money on the main dishes but the sides and starters?

Many years ago I found that my local Asian shop could supply prawns at much better prices than any of the supermarkets, so yes the supermarkets are probably charging over the odds.

At that time I also found that my local family butcher could supply better quality meat at cheaper than supermarket prices.

And back to the Asian shops for fresh veg and salads. I later moved to an area full of farm shops so switched, but they were all better quality and cheaper than the supermarkets.

[formant]

Does it never occur to people that procuring a sufficient and reliable supply of domestic animals like cats and dogs would be considerably more expensive and time-consuming than simply using the supply chain that already exists to get meat from the farm to the kitchen?

Microchips my arse. What a load of bollocks

My thoughts exactly. Ooooh the naivety!

[mudskipper]

A friend of a friend, who happens to be a vet, apparently found a microchip in his curry at a place in Leicester. He took it with him and discovered that it belonged to a dog that had been put down by a different vet a few weeks previously. Make of that what you will.

A friend of a friend who knows someone who was talking to someone on the train who'd read on the net about someone who's cousin knew a bloke who knew a vet who...

[darmstadt]

I remember years ago when they were renovating a local Chinese they found a couple of dog skeletons under the floor of the eaterie, also an Italian that got done for using dogfood as the basis for their meat sauce...Personally I wouldn't worry about the amount of animal DNA in your meat but the human DNA in your sauce...

[GB9]

Used to go to a place near Bradford where 'Meat curry' was £3 and 'Named meat curry' was £4. Didn't mean we were eating dog or cat (I hope), just that the cheap stuff was likely to be mixed leftovers.

[xoggoth]

"Ham" pizzas are often frequently suspect too, however that's supposedly Turkey, not as bad as dog.

BBC One - Fake Britain, Series 3, Episode 12

[d000hg]

I sometimes wonder how chinese restaurants manage to do prawn dishes, which are packed with decent sized king prawns, for £5. The amount of prawns you get, of that size, would often cost nearly £5 from Tesco. And when we've bought said prawns ourselves, they don't tend to be of clearly better quality.

Maybe when you buy meat and seafood by the sackload it just is that much cheaper, or maybe they don't make money on the main dishes but the sides and starters?

[NickFitz]

Does it never occur to people that procuring a sufficient and reliable supply of domestic animals like cats and dogs would be considerably more expensive and time-consuming than simply using the supply chain that already exists to get meat from the farm to the kitchen?

Microchips my arse. What a load of bollocks