There has been a long debate over the quality of in-flight meals and how the pressurisation of the aircraft cabin affects our tastebuds when we are travelling. Many a celebrity chef has tried to enhance the in-flight offering only to discover cramped conditions onboard the aircraft and production and storage techniques mean that you can’t necessarily replicate a Michelin Starred restaurant at 35,000ft. However, airlines do go a long way to ensuring a high quality product, particularly for premium passengers, and some have even employed onboard chefs to prepare the food on their aircraft. However, this does not always appear to be the case, according to recent reports in Saudi Arabian Arabic newspapers.
Apparently the Kingdom’s national carrier Saudi Arabian Airlines may well have served passengers donkey meat over the past couple of months after the carrier allegedly ignored warnings from the local government food control body that imported meat from Tunisia could be diseased or have come from donkeys. In an interview on local television, a senior inspector in the airline’s catering unit confirmed his belief that the airline had indeed served meat from the animal, despite welfare concerns.
“There were also reports about widespread sale of donkey and horse meat in Tunisia…but Saudi Arabian Airlines did not heed that warning,” he said in the interview. “This has prompted the Authority to stop all the meat and other food items imported by the airlines from Tunisia…but after nearly one month, these food items were still prepared on board Saudi aircraft, including meat without certificates of origin.”