We’ll soon be horsing down donkey meat for dinner

DID you wonder how characters in the Jason Bourne movies get through airports and over frontiers without being caught?

It’s the norm to be fingerprinted and have your picture taken, and passports have microchips and barcodes: it would be impossible unless you had a fancy, hi-tech passport-making machine.

Of course, we are supposed to infer from these films that secret agents have all sorts of dark skills that we can’t even imagine: that they can hack computers and disguise themselves as a rucksack or a banana split.

But 20 seconds on the Google machine eviscerates that fantasy. I’m putting this in print, now, in case I’m suddenly ‘disappeared’ and end up in some CIA torture camp, but I Googled ‘How to fake a passport’ and got nine and a half million hits. Not only are there discussion groups and ‘how to’ videos on YouTube, but websites blatantly selling fake passports and drivers’ licences for a variety of countries, including here.

Jason Bourne only needs the same skills as a pimply 14-year-old with a Photoshop programme on his computer.

If a teenager can do it, then why not a horse?

The root of this horse-meat burger scandal, it seems, is that it’s all too easy to fake a horse’s passport. You can change its name and description. The horse could be high on crack cocaine, but you’d never know.

When I say ‘horse’, I probably mean ‘donkey’: the many news reports on this subject have referred to equine DNA rather than horse. Given that in some countries horse meat is more expensive than beef, the chances are that it was Eeyore rather than Shergar that wound up in our food chain.

It may be a problem that is impossible to contain.

Your modern donkey is just far too tricky to be controlled by customs regulations or EU officialdom.

So, instead, shouldn’t we embrace this new culinary development? What has been overlooked is that we’ve probably all unwittingly eaten a bit of nag and it hasn’t done us any harm. We’ve probably enjoyed it.

Or, to put a more sinister spin on it, perhaps that is exactly what we’re being softened up for. Since we’ve already eaten donkey, then why not plunge into widespread donkey production?

In an era of impending ecological disaster, it makes perfect sense. They are smaller than cows, so you can pack more into a field. They don’t fart as much as cows. Urban households could keep one or two in the back garden.

There are even miniature donkeys that could be sold as meals-for-one.

If we get in early, we could be feeding donkey to the world in 20 years’ time; and that’s not to mention various donkey sauces, donkey-shaped baps for burgers. Hmm ... donkey.