Meat and Poultry

Clarissa Writes: In this year of grace 1996 meat is a very important issue. More and more, the media are attacking the nutritional quality of meat without spelling out the actualities of the situation. Consequently the wrong people suffer. Butchers’ meat, or indeed meat from the better supermarkets, is unlikely to be harmful. Setting aside the totally unproved and in any event fairly minor issue of Creutzfeldt Jakob disease, what is most likely to be unsafe is the recovered meat used in cheap burgers and made-up dishes. I suspect when the last trump comes the single most destructive dish of the twentieth century will prove to be the beefburger, destructive to health, palate and general enjoyment of food. Jennifer’s comment on recovered meat is, ‘If you can’t cut it from the carcass with a knife it isn’t edible’. To which I can only reply, ‘So wise, dear.’