HORSEMEAT SCARE

Horsemeat Scare in Early 2013

Demand and Supply Analysis - Horsemeat Scare

Introduction

Recently in UK and Ireland, there was news concerning the horse meet in beef burgers. This has raised questions on what exactly readymade foods products contain. This fear that meet already delivered in the market is of horse and due to this fact, consumes has been turning back to return to the product and hence, this has ultimately impacted on the demand and supply of the frozen, processed meat products. In this paper, demand and supply analysis would be used considering how microeconomics can be used to discuss issues around the 'horsemeat scare' in early 2013.

Discussion

The horse scandal was on peak in initial months of 2013. In Amsterdam, beef steaks on steakhouse menu was 100% made from horse steaks and this was discover few days back when this issue was gradually rising. According to the owner of steakhouse, they have no idea concerning such issue, though their supplier claimed that they have been supplying them this horse steals from last 10 years. Moreover, other prove was pictures of horses on the packages (Wilson, 2013, p.n.d).

Beside this, Europeans has been exposing more cases regarding meet swapping in groceries and meet stores also in restaurants and possibly few public institutions along with politician has been discovering on the reasons for such fraud. But the question arises for the horse industry since as crisis would be over, where this meet would be going and most significantly question arises that what would be happening to the horses that is meant for slaughter when supply turn out to be greater than demand (Ruddick, 2013, p. n.d).

Considering the concept of demand and supply, demand for a particular product increases when supply reduces i.e. in micro-economics, this concept deals with the price determination in market. As due to the scandal, people have started to purchase vegetarian alternatives in place of frozen meat products. This has increased demand for alternative i.e. substitute.

For instance, if the demand for meat product were high such as Q1 and P1, after the news of horsemeat, the demand for meat product will reduced to Q2 and P2.

At the same time, people will look for substitute and for meet; the best substitute is vegetables products and at the same time this will result in increase in demand as well supply.

According to study that was conducted in 2012 on horsemeat consumption in three different European countries, i.e. Netherlands, Belgium, and France. People of these countries stated that they do or sometime eat horsemeat. 4% and 6% of the French and Belgian citizen stated that they do eat horsemeat. But according to the Euro-stat statistics, this shows that Belgium has been importing more than 20 million KG i.e. more than 44 M pounds of horses as well as donkey on annually basis. This practice has been increasing in North America. Beside this, France has been importing approximately 15 M KG i.e. greater than 33 m pounds of horses and donkey meat ...