AFTER buying a dozen horse meat sausages from a specialist butchers in Ripley and picking up beef sausages from a supermarket, the battleground was set for the great beef versus horse taste test.
We enlisted the help of chefs at the Stratford Haven pub, in West Bridgford – and then asked the public to see if they could taste the difference.
Oliver Meek, 28, who works for Notts County Council, was walking along Central Avenue when he agreed to do the taste test.
He said: "I have eaten horse before. I don't have an actual problem with the meat itself, it's more the way it has been labelled incorrectly.
"I tried both sausages and I couldn't tell the difference easily. I like different meats, so I would probably order the horse in future."
Builder Alan Cottee, 43, of Gordon Road, West Bridgford, said: "I've heard it on the news and ever since I've wanted to try what horse tastes like."
After tasting both the horse and beef he couldn't decide which one was which – and got it wrong.
"I thought the horse was the beef – I can't believe that," he said.
And Derek Wise, 60, of Wollaton said: "I thought the horse meat was fine, it was perfectly acceptable. The problem is people feel like they have been lied to."
Vegetarian and retired university lecturer Mariya Limerick, of Bottesford, refused the taste test.
She said: "In terms of the debate, do we really want to be looking at a field of horses and think 'that would make a nice burger?
"It's a culture thing that we don't have in this country. We breed horses for working, for racing and for pleasure."
Two meat plants were raided yesterday in the latest development in the scandal. The Food Standards Agency and police officers went to a slaughterhouse in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, and a meat plant in Aberystwyth, Wales.
