When Felicia Sommers heard about the big discount meat giveaway taking place beside the community garden she tends, she wasted no time in calling all of her friends. “Have you seen the price of meat these days? It’s outrageous!” said the 32-year old mother of four. “I called as many people as I could to get over here, and get over here quick.”
One of the people Sommers called was the wife of Newark police detective Alan Hynes. “I knew something was up when my wife told me about it,” said Det. Hynes. “I changed into plain clothes and took a walk over.”
Sure enough, a few shady characters operating out of the back of a truck and dealing in cash-only transactions were running the show. “Labels were torn off the plastic so you couldn’t find out where the meat came from, but we knew it was stolen from somewhere,” said Hynes. “There were also a number of lookouts pacing up and down, these guys were real amateurs.”
“The meat looked very lean,” said Sommers, “leaner than any meat I have ever seen before. I was about to ask the guys a question when all hell broke loose and we found out the truth.”
“It’s horsemeat!” cried one astute discount meat shopper! “I know horses, my dad’s a butcher and my mom’s a vet, and this shit is horse meat!”
Panic ensued. Customers screamed. Many retched out in the open air. The purveyors of purloined pony plasm quickly grabbed their packages and threw them back in the truck, snatching some of the equine flesh from the hands of many disappointed consumers.
“I didn’t care if it came from a horse or whatever,” said single mother Winnie Foster. “I have mouths to feed. We eat pigs and sheep and birds and cows, don’t we? What’s the big deal about eating a damn horse? It’s not like it’s monkey meat or anything gross like that! Now I gotta go home and make some more damn spaghetti, and I promised my family they were going to have meat tonight. My kids are sick of spaghetti – and so am I!”
The perpetrators were arrested and charged with selling stolen property, but were not charged with selling horse meat. “It’s technically not illegal to sell horse meat in the United States. The government cleared it years ago – it’s just kind of frowned upon,” said Hynes. “So we couldn’t get them on that, though I’d have liked to. I’ve done mounted police duty before, and so the thought of eating one, well it kind of makes me sick to my stomach to tell you the truth.”
“I guess I’ve learned my lesson,” said Sommers. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”