Many of our Irish & English readers are well aware of the recent debacle with horsemeat being used in regular supermarket store burgers. With such a wide variety of fresh foods available here in Spain I for one hardly ever buy a beef burger in a supermarket, as for McD or Bking well the odd occasion. That said OCU ( Organizacion de Consumidores y Usarios: a comsumer watchdog organization so to speak) report on hamburgers published yesterday 28th January really opened my eyes.
The OCU tested 20 different brands of burgers from various stores around Spain and you guessed it, horse meat has also made its way into Spanish beef burgers (two out of the twenty contained horse DNA). Burgers have always been suspect as far as I am concerned and although they do eat horse meat in Spain I would prefer to stick to beef, thank you.
The report brought a more worrying fact about burgers to the table, the quality of the meat. Only five out of the twenty had what the OCU would classify as acceptable meat quality, with the majority rating poor or very poor. The main problems of the quality being excess fats, cartilage and tendons and very little meat in the burger contents.
All the above coupled with the excess salt and large amounts of sulphites. The sulphites are not generally a problem but may cause problems when taken by people with asthma or allergies.
Here is the table of the results:

Brand / Supermarket	Price per Kg/€	Meat quailty	Traces of Horse DNA
Alipende	7.34	Not Published	Yes
Carrefour	6.11	Very Poor	No
Carrefour Manhattan	9.35	Poor	No
Carrefour Kids	15.83	Very Poor	No
El Corte Inglés	9.78	Very Poor	No
El Pozo Selección	10.42	Poor	No
EMCESA	7.63	Not Published	No
Eroski Basic	5.88	Very Poor	Yes
Granja Los Tilos	10.23	Very Poor	No
Granjero (Coren)	13.30	Acceptable	No
Martinez Loriente (Mercadona)	6.02	Poor	No
Natural Fresh (Lidl)	5.38	Poor	No
Raza Nostra Basic	13.57	Acceptable	No
Raza Nostra Buey Gallego	21.43	Very Good	No
Roler Big Burger	8.28	Poor	No
Roler Clasica	6.68	Very Poor	No
Roler Mickey	13.93	Poor	No
Roler Summum	12.51	Very Good	No
Rustico (Lidl)	5.71	Very Poor	No
Villa del Monte (Alcampo)	6.45	Very Poor	No