By Anne Pickles

Last updated at 16:55, Tuesday, 12 February 2013

PROGRESS... now there’s a funny thing. Though it’s fair to say not many are laughing.

Anne Pickles

Might it be an idea to make a case to regress for a change. You know, regression in recession. Not a bad slogan for a T-shirt, that.

So far as I can work out, progress has made it cheaper for nasty, fake meat to travel half way round the world – or Europe anyway – and back again, through the dirty hands and mincing machines of any number of processors on the way, than for real meat to travel from farm to butcher to dinner table in a radius of 30 miles.

My pea-sized brain is befuddled – so I couldn’t swear to the science, maths or geography. But nevertheless, two convenient ready meals of cottage pie and another of lasagne have made the journey from my fridge to my bin without sparing any horses.

They didn’t come from a named and shamed supermarket, they hadn’t been frozen and there was no reason to doubt their assertion of 27 per cent beef content. But that’s progress for you – you can’t trust anything any more.

The rush for cheap, easy, stick in the oven and ignore the consequences food is a progression we’ve all bought into at some time. It has been irresistible, for reasons we’re all well aware of.

And now? Well, the consequences are all beginning to unravel to leave a nasty taste in the mouth.

Conspiracy theorists are already talking of secrets and lies. I’m inclined to join them.

Nothing wrong with horse meat – so long as it’s clean, healthy, not laced with drugs or disease; not crammed into my cottage pie after dying of cancer, so saving on disposal costs.

And now I’m never going to be convinced that has been the case. Once duped, forever suspicious. I’ve been conned by the false advantages of progress and I’m working on regression as an alternative.

Bound to wonder about possible links between unsafe meat, with no traceable provenance and increasingly common occurrences of cancers and life-threatening illnesses, regression in recession seems like a plan.

They say there’s no health risk. They say it’s all fine. But they also said old nag was beef, so who’s going to believe them?

Not me. I’m off to the local butcher. I’m sticking to what grandma did so well. I’m regressing. Anyone feel like joining me?

First published at 16:32, Tuesday, 12 February 2013
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk