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[–] 92 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (8 children)

It sounds highly implausible that Argentina would export horse meat as beef to the US. Argentina is a huge beef producer and while they do produce some horse meat it's exported to the EU where there is an actual demand for horse meat and there it's labeled correctly as horse. Why would they export it to the US as mislabeled beef? I have a hard time believing this without evidence. Have I missed something or is this just an unsubstantiated rumour?

Edit: Apparently snopes did an article about this. They found no evidence of it being true https://www.snopes.com/news/2026/08/26/trump-ground-beef-wild-horses/

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  • [–] 41 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Why would they export it to the US as mislabeled beef?

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  • [–] 31 points 2 days ago (3 children)

    Meat exports are very sensitive and even one small scandal can cause your entire meat exports to be banned all around the globe. It would be far too large of a risk to take even from a strictly economic perspective. In addition to this meat produced for export in Argentina is slaughtered in special export approved slaughterhouses in which the importing country can send inspectors and when it arrives in the importing country it's inspected again. One batch of Argentinian beef recently skipped through import inspection, hence the recall. It was not a failed inspection and nothing has been found to be wrong with the beef.

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  • [–] 40 points 2 days ago

    Keep in mind the US is basically getting rid of a bunch of their food and safety regulations right now. Producers and suppliers basically stopped inspecting a bunch of stuff the same day a bunch of regulations were pulled, and now a bunch of our food is already making people sick.

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  • [–] 25 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    It could be the meat from the national parks wild horses we are paying extortionate rates to be slaughtered and sold back to us

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago (4 children)

    Does the EU want the full horse or just specific parts? If only specific parts, what happens to the remaining, unwanted ones?

    If you mix the extra bits with regular stuff, you get to sell more regular stuff while getting rid of the extra bits cheaper.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    It's rare and quite inefficient to export whole carcasses. So it would be exported as whole fine cuts and as mince. The organs would most probably go to pet food locally. The mince would not reach EU consumers as mince but rather as sausage or salami. In fact the salami I buy says it contains non eu horse meat on the label which is highly likely to be Argentinian horse.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Is there traditionally horse in salami? Is it good?

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago

    Yeah I think it's good! Horse meat is often more expensive than beef so there is a reason they add it. It's kinda like really lean beef but without that beefy savoriness. Most salami is made with pork as the main ingredient but pure pork can often be a bit flat so by adding beef you can get more of a meat flavor in there. But beef often makes the salami taste beefy and savory in a bad way when combined with fatty pork, like a stew or something. Horse ads that meaty flavor without that distinctive beef savoriness. So you get a salami with a strong meat taste that's still very clean on the palate. I really enjoy it. I have seen more than one brand with horse but to be honest it's quite rare outside the top shelf products.

    Is horse traditionally in salami? I don't actually know but I would imagine so. Horse meat taboo is strong in the UK and has been taboo in the UK for apparently hundreds of years and this has spread to other anglo countries. But in the rest of the EU this taboo doesn't really exist.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 days ago

    In the Netherlands, the kroketten and bitterballen you buy at a restaurant or bar usually contain about 20% of horse meat. Since this is just small bits and pieces, it can be about any part of the animal. In the past it was in a lot more products, but consumption of horse meat is on a decline.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago (2 children)

    a few years ago, there was a small to medium scandal in europe: beef lasagna with argentinian meat was found to be actually ground horse meat.

    while it was bad to mislabel the meat, to me the bigger tragedy was that they had to throw away all those products. i am sure selling them at a discount would be less of an economic damage for the corporations. at the same time students and not so well off people get a cheaper meal. either way, i really like horse meat - to thet extent that i am quite willing to pay extra for a nice cut.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 day ago (1 child)

    That scandal in the EU was not argentinian horse meat. It was domestic EU horse meat from Romania and Poland. And the whole fraud did not even originate in those countries, it was meat middle men in the Netherlands and France who relabeled, once correctly labeled horse meat, to beef. That's what makes this whole current rumor so implausible. Mislabeling horse as beef in the import stage would require the inspections both in Argentina and the entry inspection in the US to both fail. It would be far easier for something like this to happen inside the US by US companies than Argentina trying to commit a scam like this.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 day ago

    you are right, it wasn't Argentina according to the french "Union fédérale des consommateurs". But according to them it was only Romania, Poland wasn't mentioned. Pretty sure back then i read something about Argentina, but that might just have been an unconfirmed suspicion.

    At no point did i say it was the Argentinian exporter who mislabeled the product. But mislabelings do happen (malicious in the EU case) and will get caught in the labs eventually.

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