SOMETHING shocking happened to me the other day. I agreed with a letter to this newspaper from Godfrey Bloom, the Ukip MEP. It was like that moment in a horror film when someone looks down and sees their hand turning werewolf hairy.

The cause of this alarming turn of events lay in Mr Bloom’s thoughts on the horsemeat scandal, which he hoped would “encourage families to return to good old home cooking, with meat and veg bought locally”.

There is much sense in what the man said – certainly more so than usual. Normally I would walk across the ideological highway and dodge the heavy trucks in order to put myself on the opposite side from Mr Bloom. But here we are, in agreement for once.

It is only three weeks since this column last took a cautious bite of horsemeat, as it were, but matters have moved on. Now we are no longer worrying about horse DNA discovered in burgers, but fretting over Findus frozen lasagne found to contain 100 per cent horsemeat.

My intention this week is to tackle three meat-related ‘courses’: one, living with a veggie; two, home cooking; and, three, the hidden ways of the food industry.

I shall start with the personal angle, thanks to the presence in my life of She Who Chews No Flesh.

My wife gave up meat after the foot-and-mouth crisis when the news was filled with the smoke from the funeral pyres of diseased cattle. She shunned meat on the spot and since then has eaten no living thing (unless bananas count).

Having a vegetarian in the family can be difficult, with more planning needed and two meals to be cooked. Either that or the veggie just eats what everyone else is having, minus the meat, which often happens.

In the early meat-free days, there were five of us in the house; four meat-eaters versus one vegetarian. Now the balance is down to two-to-one and we eat more meals without meat. This is not difficult. Last Sunday lunchtime, there were 11 round the table for a meal featuring two types of home-made vegetable soup and two loaves of bread from the human bread machine (well, I do have some uses in the kitchen). Plus the last corner of the Christmas cake.

My wife is not a preachy sort of vegetarian. Sometimes she points out that meat is ecologically wasteful and I’ll nod in agreement while enjoying a meaty mouthful of sausage and mash, or whatever.

Don’t tell her, but I worry she may have a point: we should eat less meat, although some weeks if we ate any less it might be none at all. So I do wonder if vegetarianism might be worth a try – at least until thoughts of roast chicken and bacon and pot-roast brisket of beef banish such noble intentions.

Let’s move on to home cooking. If you ask me, there should be a warning on the side of frozen food packets saying something like: “May contain God knows what: do yourself a favour and cook something instead.”

Cooking is easy and doesn’t have to be expensive. Lasagne is a doddle and preparing one pot of mince bought from the butchers will do you no end of meals. Or go veggie and try mushroom lasagne, which is surprisingly fine – and I was the one who was surprised about that.

To wrap up, let’s turn to the food industry. How interesting it was to read that Findus, famed supplier of ready meals, is part-owned by a private equity firm that also has a big stake in Weetabix. In fact, many British big names, from Bird’s Eye and John West to veggie-friendly Quorn, are owned in a similar worrying fashion.

Private equity firms buy up reliable big names, pile the companies with debt and drive down costs to pay off what has been borrowed, at least I think that’s how it works.

This is all a little complicated: but what it boils-in-the-bag down to is that much of our ready-made food is supplied through complicated international networks which make it difficult to know the exact provenance of what we are eating.

Eating meat closer to home is the answer, or marrying a vegetarian.

Follow Julian on twitter @juliancole5