Food - A Scandalous History

Giles Coren takes a trip back to the days of Victorian food scandals.

Then, adulteration of food was endemic and the ghoulish newspapers of the day played on people's fears about eating horse and cat.

In 2013 we have witnessed the explosion of a public panic about the presence of horse meat in supermarket ready meals and mass catering establishments. These scandals have raised a number of important questions about the traceability of our food, our reliance on industrial processes in food production for mass catering and the extent to which the consumer in this process is a victim or really 'should know better'.

This programme asks whether it might be useful to look back at similar scandals in the past in order to contextualise our fears about 'horse-meat lasagne'.

Producer: Susan Marling
A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 4.

Giles Coren compares our horsemeat scandal to the Victorian history of food adulteration.