Woman vindicated by food industry horse meat scandal

The horse meat scandal that has engulfed Britain’s food industry has left one Horsham woman vindicated as she raised concerns in December.

Ciba Shanae, 61, of York Close, Horsham, brought her concerns about horse meat being sold on the high street to the County Times in December 2012, a month before it was found in many products across the UK and Europe.

Having learned to ride at age eight, she also had her own pony ‘Trigger’ when she was growing up, and said she was thankful she does not eat meat so there was no question she might have unknowingly eaten horse.

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She also felt vindicated by the revelations of the past month, and wanted to make people more conscious of what they were putting in themselves.

“This is what people are putting inside themselves. Subjectively we are talking about people’s health and their psychological and personal wellbeing,” she said.

“It’s an opportunity to clean up, to get it right, and for people to start making real choices, but I feel the law on import/export needs double checking.”

She continued: “We accept the way of doing something without really having a look at whether we are allowing suffering. There’s still a blindness and dumbing out of what we are actually doing.”

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She is also considering starting a petition to have the horse based in a more sovereign space in the country.

“It’s about putting the horse in a position of honour rather than a place where we can eat it,” she explained.

Ms Shanae wrote to the Queen, Horsham MP Francis Maude, and the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) last year.

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