A Litany of Regret for Eating Horses

Have mercy on us, we pray, O Lord
For we have eaten things we ought not to have done
And not eaten things we thought we had done
And there is no beef in us.

Shield us from the neigh-sayers
And from those who stamp their hooves at us.

Surely we should blame ourselves
For when we bought those bargain packs of burgers at the supermarket,

We thought 99p for six was entirely reasonable
Little wondering what was in them.

But now we discover our food had more donkey content
than a pub-full of English centre-backs.

We have eaten horse dressed in cows' seasoning
and our stomachs rise up against us.

We have saddled ourselves with worry
and wondered whether we will get the trots.

How long, O Lord,
will we continue to divorce our lust for cheap food
from their logical implications on our supply chain?

We cast stones at the Romanians, the Poles and the French
But you look into our hearts and Findus to blame.
Sorry, find us to blame, we mean.

Surely better traceability will follow me all the days of my life
And I will trust in the power of the EAN-128 barcode to protect me
At least until such time as the next food scare involves cut-price vegetables
And I roll in the ashes once more
(the ashes of repentance, that is - not the ashes of Bernie's cooking, although they're pretty similar).