A Hint of Horse Meat Has a Nation Squirming More Than Its Neighbors

為什麼英國人對馬肉如此敏感？

ALAN COWELL 報道 2013年02月27日

Johannes Cleris/European Pressphoto Agency

瑞典的一幅宜家廣告海報。

倫敦——英國人通常可以藉助莎士比亞，為當前的困境找到相應的文學描寫。但是很奇怪，英國人有句耳熟能詳的台詞，用在今天卻偏偏很不恰當。
1485年，在博斯沃斯平原的戰場上，即將戰敗的理查三世(Richard III)喊道，“一匹馬，一匹馬，我的王國換一匹馬！”但現在，似乎英國人最不想要的就是馬，至少不想在標明了是別的肉類的食品裡面吃出馬肉。

按圖放大

Radek Mica/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

檢查人員稱，他們在捷克的宜家店內出售的肉丸裡面檢測到馬的DNA。

幾周來，英國密切關注一場波及全歐洲的醜聞：一些家喻戶曉的品牌出售的肉類加工品，包裝上寫着純牛肉，卻檢測出了馬的DNA。這些食品中包括波隆那 意大利麵、千層面和漢堡包。電視紀錄片對此展開了調查，報紙頭條大肆宣揚此事，博客作者為此撰文，Twitter用戶紛紛轉發這條消息。
但似乎無人能夠解釋清楚，為何食物中出現一點點馬肉，英國的消費者和食客就如此擔憂，而他們的鄰居，法國、荷蘭等其他歐洲國家民眾都能心平氣和地吃馬肉呢？
善於反思的英國人挖掘了一系列原因。例如，根據英國古老的禁忌，不可食用被人類視為寵物、夥伴、及體育和戰爭英雄的動物。又例如，此事是諸多欺騙公眾行為的又一個案例。
亞歷山大·路西·史密斯(Alexander Lucie-Smith)牧師在《天主教先驅報》(The Catholic Herald)上撰文稱，“這不是馬肉醜聞，這是商品標籤醜聞”，此事令人質疑，“我們還能相信商品標籤上的任何信息嗎？”
近期的瘋牛病和口蹄疫動搖了人們對英國畜群的信心。對這兩種疫病的記憶，可以部分地回答這個問題。一項學術研究甚至將厭食馬肉的傳統追溯到八世紀。當時，教皇格里高利三世(Pope Gregory III)試圖迫使新皈依的盎格魯-撒克遜人擯棄吃馬肉這種異教習俗。
此番的喧囂也反映了一些消費者的不安。他們認為自己遭受了雙重愚弄。由於經濟緊縮，他們被迫購買便宜的成品食物。然而，出售這些食品的連鎖企業，卻 又被那些追求暴富、偷偷摸摸的供應商，甚至是犯罪團伙操縱。而且，該醜聞也令人想起英國根深蒂固的等級差異。富人買得起屠戶手中昂貴的鮮切肉。他們嘲笑買 不起鮮肉的大眾。
馬肉比牛肉便宜得多。而且，調查還發現了一條缺乏監管的地下產業鏈，一直延伸到羅馬尼亞和墨西哥，根本不知道是在哪個環節把馬肉混入了牛肉製品，英國人悠久的喜愛牛肉的傳統被利用了。
早在15世紀，法國騎兵統帥就這樣分析英國人：“給他們一頓牛肉大餐和鋼鐵，他們就會像狼一樣大吃，像魔鬼一樣戰鬥。”是的，這句話也出自莎士比亞，這次是《亨利五世》(Henry V)。
法國人戲稱英國人為“燒牛肉”(les rosbifs)，這不是沒有道理的，這也表現出法國人對英國飲食完全嗤之以鼻的態度。
據說，法國人是在1807年埃勞戰役(Battle of Eylau)中為自己的飲食習慣找到了依據。這有可能只是傳說，但據說當時拿破崙大軍的軍醫長巴龍·多米尼克-讓·拉雷(Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey)下令飢餓的士兵吃戰死的馬肉，讓愛吃馬肉成了法國人的神聖傳統。
直到今天，在巴黎一個我經常去的地方，一家賣馬肉的屠戶還在一周兩次的街邊集市上驕傲地擺攤營業，她旁邊有賣海鮮、熟布里奶酪、烤雞、鵝肝醬還有用剁碎的豬腸做餡的法國香腸的攤位。用豬下水做香腸，這對一些人來說恐怕就像馬肉對英國人一樣地奇怪。
換句話說，飲食決定了身份。就像德國教授維克托·B·邁爾-羅霍(Victor B. Meyer-Rochow)在自由歐洲電台(Radio Free Europe)上說的那樣，“我們說馬是這樣一種高貴的動物，所以不能吃馬肉，這樣，我們就抬高了自己，讓我們顯得比那些吃馬肉像吃兔肉一樣的人要優越。”
然而，這件事還傳遞出一個更加灰暗的信息。最近年，關於英國媒體、BBC、國家醫療服務體系(National Health Service)、議會以及政客個人的醜聞不斷被曝光。操控基準利率和不當銷售金融工具的醜聞曝光更是加劇了2008年金融危機以來人們對銀行和銀行家的 信任危機。
的確，《獨立報》(The Independent)前任編輯安德烈亞斯·惠特曼·史密斯(Andreas Whittam Smith)曾在該報上稱，“越深入地審視馬肉醜聞，就越讓人聯想到銀行業危機的根源”——掛着牛頭賣馬肉，不正像打着安全投資的幌子，推銷次級抵押貸款 一樣嗎？
或許，真正顯示了英國人特點的，是一連串與馬有關的冷笑話，說明英國人面對又一次的欺詐行為，還是只能由它去，詐騙得不到解釋，也得不到懲罰，普通人基本沒有選擇，只能阿Q式地自我寬慰，想想那句老話：商品售出，概不負責，買方留心。
其中一個比較好玩的笑話是這樣的：一個漢堡包走進酒吧點杯喝的。侍者說，“我聽不清楚。”漢堡包回答道，“對不起，我嗓子有點啞。”（英文“沙啞”［hoarse］與“馬”同音——譯註）

翻譯：梁英、張亮亮

A Hint of Horse Meat Has a Nation Squirming More Than Its Neighbors

By ALAN COWELL February 27, 2013

LONDON — Seeking literary echoes of current predicaments, Britons can generally rely on Shakespeare. But one line in the national memory has proved curiously inappropriate.

“A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse,” cries Richard III, facing defeat at the Battle of Bosworth Field, in 1485. Yet horses seem to be the last thing Britons want these days, at least in food that is labeled as something else altogether.


For weeks, the land has been seized with a spreading, Europe-wide scandal over discoveries of equine DNA in processed meals sold under household brands packaged as exclusively bovine — spaghetti Bolognese, lasagna and burgers among them. Television documentaries have investigated the phenomenon. Headlines have trumpeted it. Bloggers have blogged. Tweeters have tweeted.

But no one seems able to fully answer the question of why shoppers and diners in Britain are so much more worried about a hint of horse meat than European neighbors in France, the Netherlands and elsewhere who eat their steeds with equanimity.

Soul-searching Britons have invoked factors ranging from an age-old taboo on consuming animals seen as pets, companions or heroes of sport and war, to a sense of one more betrayal in a catalog of broken public trust.

“This is not a horse meat scandal,” said the Rev. Alexander Lucie-Smith, a priest writing in The Catholic Herald. “It is a labeling scandal” that has prompted the question, “Can we trust anything we read on a label?”

Part of the answer lies in recent memory of mad cow and foot-and-mouth disease that shook confidence in the nation’s herds. An academic study even traces the equine aversion to the eighth century, when Pope Gregory III sought to press newly Christianized Anglo-Saxons to abandon their horse-eating, pagan ways.

For some, the brouhaha reflects unease among consumers who feel double-duped, pressed by economic austerity into buying cheap, ready-made meals while the food chain delivering them is manipulated by shadowy, get-rich-quick suppliers, perhaps even criminal gangs. The scandal, moreover, has conjured Britain’s stubborn class distinctions, with those who can afford pricey butchers’ cuts sneering at the masses who cannot.

Horse meat is much cheaper than beef, and investigators have discovered a murky, often unregulated procession of players stretching from Romania to Mexico, with no clear indication of the point at which it enters the mix of meat sold as beef, exploiting an age-old hankering for Britain’s signature hearty food.
As long ago as the 15th century, the Constable of France — according, yes, to Shakespeare, this time in “Henry V” — analyzed the English character thus: “Give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.”
Not for nothing did the British earn the French sobriquet “les rosbifs,” betokening an overwhelmingly sniffy Gallic perception of British cuisine.
The French, it is said, found their own dietary vindication at the Battle of Eylau, in 1807, when, possibly apocryphally, Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey, the surgeon general of Napoleon’s Grande Armée, ordered starving French troops to eat the flesh of their fallen horses, enshrining the practice of equine epicureanism.
To this day, in an area of Paris that I frequent, the horse-butcher takes her place proudly at the twice-weekly street market alongside vendors of fresh seafood, ripe Brie, roast chicken, foie gras, pâté and fare like Andouillette sausage made of porcine entrails, which seems as alien to some palates as horse meat does to the British.
In other words, food defines identity. As a German professor, Victor B. Meyer-Rochow, told Radio Free Europe, “by saying the horse is such a noble animal and we will not eat this meat, we elevate ourselves above those who treat the horse as if it were just rabbit or something else.”
But there is a much more somber message. In recent years, an unrelenting succession of tawdry scandals has eroded trust in the British press and the BBC, the National Health Service, Parliament and individual politicians. Exposés of the rigging of benchmark interest rates and the mis-selling of financial instruments have compounded the loss of confidence in banks and bankers since the financial crisis of 2008.
Indeed, the former editor Andreas Whittam Smith wrote in The Independent, “The more closely the horse meat scandal is examined, the more it brings to mind the origins of the banking crisis” — for horse meat sold as beef, read subprime mortgages sold as safe investments.
Perhaps what really distinguishes the British, though, has been a crop of horsey and not very funny jokes, suggesting a stoic resignation to yet one more scam that will go unexplained and unpunished, leaving ordinary people little choice but to look for a Monty Pythonesque bright side, and mull the old adage: caveat emptor, let the buyer beware.
A sample — and this is one of the better ones: A burger walks into a bar and asks for a drink. “I can’t hear you,” says the barkeep. “Sorry,” replies the burger. “I’m a little bit horse.”