I thought pets already got to eat horsemeat.
If people in this country want to eat horse, thats fine, provided they can be assured that the meat has been through all the proper checks for meat destined for the human food chain, and is clearly labelled as horse.
And that is really what all this recent scandal has been about - the passing off of horsemeat as beef, with apparently little or no checks as to its suitability for human consumption. We, the consumer, have been ripped off- paying a premium for products labelled 100% beef, which have in fact been adulterated - in some cases, to the extent that they contain no beef whatsoever.
The retailers and wholesalers have not done a very good job of regulating the food chain. and the government were short-sighted in changing the remit of the FSA, downsizing the agency and farming out testing to local authorities without any ringfencing, resulting in some local authorities performing no quality checks whatsoever.