Legalized Slaughter of Horses for Human Consumption?

[SirDennis]

tinwë, I agree with Voronwë's post, so please don't be annoyed with me for simply copying the title of the only article I could find at the time on this subject. I did look for another source of information, but all I could find at the time were other sites that had copied the same article.

I will change the thread title out of deference to you.

As a matter of fact, the mods can delete the whole damn thread if they want to. I don't care.

If it helps, your intentions were clear to me. You were not interested in Obama's doings. You were offended at the idea that horses should become food...

I think tinwë was noticing that the thread is not really about Obama anymore...

[River]

So I did some reading about food taboos. Some are pretty arbitrary while others probably have some sense behind them. As anth mentioned, the hang up in we in the US have over eating horse is something we share with the UK: we do not eat our pets. Except horses aren't necessarily treated like pets.

My Pinto horse Kolby was (apparently) sold at auction in 2006, purchased by the pound. He's awfully pretty, our Kolbs, and I think that's why someone bought him from "the knackers" to try to make another buck off of him. He really wasn't very well trained, or easy to handle.

But, of course, five years later, he's reserve champion in training level dressage in the state of Arizona.

It just all seems like a crapshoot. What is a horse worth, anyway?

Kolby's story sort of digs at how we view other animals in general, doesn't it? It's a weird grey zone we put them in because in many ways we treat other animals like commodities but, on the other hand, we know that they're more than that. You can go to jail for abusing your pets or livestock. You can't go to jail for abusing your car. But when you decide you don't want your animals or your car anymore, it's perfectly okay to sell it, give it away, or junk it.

Weird, no? And I'm not particularily into the idea that non-human animals should be treated as equals to humans because, well, they aren't. But they aren't cars either.

Should I ignore instincts and eons of RNA? RNA? What? Is? That? Zactly?

RNA is ribonucleic acid. Think of it as DNA's much more interesting cousin.

[tinwë]

Thank you Lali. And I am sorry for my outburst too. You didn't deserve that.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Lali, I hope I was clear that it was not you that I was annoyed at. I knew that it wasn't your intention to make this be about President Obama, and the subject is definitely worth discussing (as the extensive and interesting response demonstrates).

[anthriel]

Lali: That is the title that I saw everywhere on Facebook today, and it took you bringing it here for me to learn it was actually a bipartisan bill (which Obama did sign, of course, even though he apparently promised differently with a 2008 campaign promise. I do feel for the man... keeping all those promises is hard, in the real world!). If you hadn't brought it here for discussion, I would not have been quite as aware of the sensationalism of all those titles on FB. Obviously, the topic you were trying to highlight is the slaughter of horses for human consumption. But I am glad to learn what I have learned, here.

Except horses aren't necessarily treated like pets.

Well, therein lies the rub, huh? They are considered livestock, although the miniature horses really have to stretch that definition. At least there's not a lot of meat on the hoof in a mini to make a burger out of it.

My Pinto horse Kolby was (apparently) sold at auction in 2006, purchased by the pound. He's awfully pretty, our Kolbs, and I think that's why someone bought him from "the knackers" to try to make another buck off of him. He really wasn't very well trained, or easy to handle.

But, of course, five years later, he's reserve champion in training level dressage in the state of Arizona.

It just all seems like a crapshoot. What is a horse worth, anyway?

Kolby's story sort of digs at how we view other animals in general, doesn't it? It's a weird grey zone we put them in because in many ways we treat other animals like commodities but, on the other hand, we know that they're more than that. You can go to jail for abusing your pets or livestock. You can't go to jail for abusing your car. But when you decide you don't want your animals or your car anymore, it's perfectly okay to sell it, give it away, or junk it.

It is an interesting grey zone. I am seriously considering becoming a vegetarian, actually. I'm having a hard time making sense of my habit of eating meat, given my empathy towards animals.

Should I ignore instincts and eons of RNA? RNA? What? Is? That? Zactly?

RNA is ribonucleic acid. Think of it as DNA's much more interesting cousin.

Well, not necessarily MORE interesting, but DNA is kind of a one trick pony (pardon the pun), and RNA can wear lots of hats. It's useful.

[Primula Baggins]

There is absolutely no need for that. It's a perfectly good topic.

[SirDennis]

Sort of following River's thinking here...

Over the ages husbandry was practiced in order to keep animals that performed work or provided a product beyond their own hides (ie eggs and milk) alive and well. It was also a practical way to keep meat fresh until you were ready to eat it. Meat was considered essential for survival in temperate climes.

Now the availability of vegetable and grain produce year round (and the means to store it) and less dependence on animals for their ability to work, should have all but eliminated the need to keep some kinds of animals, except as pets.

But the pet industry is fraught with cruelty, unsavory practices, and waste. On the buyer side, many animal owners are not equipped to take care of animals properly. The decision to obtain a pet (or two, three or more) is often taken lightly or solely out of self interest. If things don't work out they are often abandoned, become feral and hunted as vermin. In the rural area I used to live, packs of abandoned cum wild dogs were a threat to wildlife, livestock, and humans alike.

In other words, except for chickens for eggs and cows for milk, I cannot see much good in the practice of keeping any animals. (On a personal note, the thought that every-other backyard in the nation becomes dog doo tea in times of heavy rainfall makes my skin crawl.) In tough economic times animal welfare, even for the most cherished companion pets, goes downhill quickly. As others have noted, horses are not low maintenance pets to begin with.

Having said all that, I do admire people who seek to care for mistreated animals, as long as they themselves are equipped to do so and are not animal hoarders.

[Frelga]

I'm coming at it from an entirely different angle. I think there is a great difference between things I find distasteful personally (eating horses or pigs) and things that should be illegal. The latter I feel should be limited to those actions that hurt other people or destroy other people's property. Merely making people uncomfortable does not qualify.

[River]

I dunno. I'd say my pet cat performs some very useful services that I might otherwise be turning to drugs like Xanax and Ambien for. In principle, my cat would also solve any mouse problems we have, except we've never had mouse problems and I'm not sure his mama taught him how to hunt.

But people do take pet ownership too lightly. And I'm not sure everyone who brings home a pet does it with the understanding that certain animals have certain behavioral tendencies that you need to accommodate with equipment and training. And then there're the people who go overboard and buy designer clothes for their dogs and cats...

RNA is ribonucleic acid. Think of it as DNA's much more interesting cousin.

Well, not necessarily MORE interesting, but DNA is kind of a one trick pony (pardon the pun), and RNA can wear lots of hats. It's useful.

Them's fighting words. Or would you prefer I called it DNA's more unstable cousin? There's one in every family you know. I get along with RNA just fine, but I know how to handle it. Most are driven away screaming.

Nice molecule. Good molecule. Stop looking at me like that...

[Aravar]

To say that horse is considered a delicacy in France is to make it seem like a "special" food. In fact it's a routine food: go to any supermarket and you'll find packets of horsemeat in with the beef and the other meat.

[Alatar]

The Wikipedia page on this is really interesting! Hard to believe how our cultural taboos have been shaped and formed by so many varied influences.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_meat

Reasons for the taboo

In some countries, the effects of this prohibition by the Roman Catholic Church have lingered and horse meat prejudices have progressed from taboos, to avoidance, to abhorrence.[18] In other parts of the world, horse meat has the stigma of being something poor people eat and is seen as a cheap substitute for other meats, such as pork and beef.

According to the anthropologist Marvin Harris,[5] some cultures class horse meat as taboo because the horse converts grass into meat less efficiently than ruminants. When breeding cattle for meat, a cow or a sheep will produce more meat than a horse if fed with the same amount of grass.

There is also an element of sentimentality, as horses have long enjoyed a close relationship with many humans, on a similar level to household pets – this can be seen projected in such Anglophone cultural icons such as Black Beauty and My Little Pony. Compare with the anthropomorphic animals in Babe, Charlotte's Web, and Freddy the Pig.

Totemistic taboo is also a possible reason for refusal to eat horse meat as an everyday food, but did not necessarily preclude ritual slaughter and consumption. Roman sources state that the goddess Epona was widely worshipped in Gaul and southern Britain. Epona, a triple aspect goddess, was the protectress of the horse and horse keepers, and horses were sacrificed to her;[20] she was paralleled by the Irish Macha and Welsh Rhiannon. The Uffington White Horse is probable evidence of ancient horse worship. The ancient Indian Brahmins engaged in horse sacrifice (Ashwamedh Yaghya) as recorded in the Vedas; but within context of the ritual sacrificial is not being 'killed' but instead being smothered to death.[21] In 1913, the Finnic Mari people of the Volga region were observed to practice a horse sacrifice.[21]

In ancient Scandinavia, the horse was very important, as a living, working creature, as a sign of the owner's status, and symbolically within the old Norse religion. Horses were slaughtered as a sacrifice to the gods and the meat was eaten by the people taking part in the religious feasts.[22] When the Nordic countries were Christianized, eating horse meat was regarded as a sign of paganism and prohibited. A slight skepticism against eating horse meat is still common as a reminder of this in these countries even today.[23]

It is notable that, despite horses having been bred in England since pre-Roman times, the English language has no widely used term for horse meat, as opposed to four for pig meat (pork, bacon, ham, gammon), three for sheep meat (lamb, hogget and mutton), two for cow meat (beef and veal), and so on. English speaking countries, however, have sometimes marketed horse meat under the euphemism "cheval meat" (cheval being the French for horse). Also, note that the words pork, bacon, mutton, veal, and beef all derive from Anglo-Norman vocabulary, because of the class structure of England after the Norman Conquest in 1066 CE: the poor (Anglo-Saxon-speaking Britons) tended the animals, while the rich (French-speaking Normans) ate the meat. The peasants had very little to do with horses.

[yovargas]

I'm coming at it from an entirely different angle. I think there is a great difference between things I find distasteful personally (eating horses or pigs) and things that should be illegal. The latter I feel should be limited to those actions that hurt other people or destroy other people's property. Merely making people uncomfortable does not qualify.

This is my general feeling too but you'll note that the part I bolded would eliminate animal cruelty laws. That would be...controversial, to say the least.

[Frelga]

Yes, I know, yov, and since I'd like to keep them, I was trying to work them in. It echoes what River said about that strange place that animals occupy in our lives. On the one hand, it is illegal to mistreat an animal on purpose, on the other it is perfectly legal to raise vast numbers of animals for the express purpose of slaughering them, and to make their lives a misery in the process.

I would be very happy to restate my very simplistic guideline to say "cause intentional suffering to living creatures." But then, how do we justify feedlots?

Al, I think the author of that very interesting article forgot another simple reason - in much of the Western world, horses have always been too expensive, and too valuable as a working animal, to be used for food.

[Lalaith]

tinwë, It's fine. I'm sorry for not thinking ahead to how the title would be perceived; I just copied it. It should be obvious by now that I really wasn't concerned about Obama's role in this; I was concerned about the slaughtering of horses for consumption.


To that topic, Alatar's link is interesting. I fully admit that my abhorrence of eating horse meat is tied into sentimentality. Just like I wouldn't eat another pet, I wouldn't eat a horse. And horses seem to possess a higher level of intelligence than some other animals we eat (sheep, e.g.). It's not logical, and I really can't defend it. But there it is.

Besides, I'm sure there's some ancient ancestor of mine who worshiped horses, and I'm still feeling the effects of that. Or maybe it was some ancestor who regarded eating horse meat as paganism. Likely, it was both.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's some backlash from this decision. The horse roundups out West are already controversial enough, particularly in their methodology (use of helicopters, stress and cruelty to the horses, etc.). Can slaughterhouses be trusted to handle this new task responsibly and ethically?

I have my doubts, but then that leads back to the logical conclusion that I shouldn't eat meat at all or unless we've killed it ourselves. (Said as three deer hang from a tree in our backyard...)

[vison]

Slaughterhouses will slaughter horses the way they do cattle - it they're ethical and humane enough to slaughter cattle, why are horses any different?

It's too early in the day to get into a discussion about feedlots and slaughterhouses.

We don't use "intelligence" as a standard for what animals we keep to kill. Most pigs are much smarter than most dogs, and cows are at least as smart as horses. Actually, having kept both cows and horses, I would come down on the side of cows . . . . Sheep are really dumb, there's no argument about that, they are the dumbest quadruped I've ever dealt with. They make chickens and turkeys look like rocket scientists.

Lalaith is right. It's not "logical", it's cultural and emotional. It is interesting, though, that eating beef has usually been and continues to be a sort of "status symbol". Poor people ate pigs and chickens and that not very often. As a given society becomes richer, the consumption of beef goes up.

[Lalaith]

Slaughterhouses will slaughter horses the way they do cattle - it they're ethical and humane enough to slaughter cattle, why are horses any different?

That's a big "if," vison. I know some are truly appalling.

It's not often that I side with my emotions over logic, but it does happen from time to time. This is one of those times. No amount of logic is going to persuade me to support this.

(Of course, I am picturing wild horses being rounded up and slaughtered, as opposed to tame horses being slaughtered, and I think that makes the imagery more poignant.)

Ehhhh, nope. Completely illogical no matter how I look at it. I have no leg to stand on, but I still oppose this. I wouldn't actively campaign against this, but I would definitely vote "no" if it ever came up in an election.

[yovargas]

I'm pretty much totally okay with it just being cultural and emotional, and not logical that an individual doesn't want to eat horse (or anything else for that matter). I ain't gonna eat horse if I can avoid it at all. But as Frelga said, there's a line between "I think that's disgusting" and "That should be illegal" and I'm not okay with the latter just being cultural and emotional.



x-post with Lali

[vison]

Horses are being slaughtered every day - for pet food. If they were being slaughtered for human food, it is POSSIBLE they would be treated better.

I'm not "in favour" of eating horses or for anyone else to eat horses.

You're right, it is illogical and emotional, like everything close to the bone.

The issue of people eating horsemeat is one thing. What I find appallingly offensive is the Pet Food Industry. Most pet food sellers call pet owners "pet parents" now, have you noticed? When I see those commercials for fancy cat and dog food and then a minute later see a commercial begging for pennies to feed starving Africans? My head goes wugga wugga.

I love my cats and dogs. But not for one second do I think they are "just like my kids".

[Lalaith]

Oh, I agree with you there, vison. They are animals. I love them, but they are not just like my kids.

I thought they had outlawed the use of horses in pet food. How did they get around this? (Or when did that law change?)

[vison]

Well, here is a link:

http://www.thatmutt.com/2009/01/25/is-t ... -dog-food/