We eat horses, don't we?

Christa Weil

International Herald Tribune

LONDON: Recently, an official for the American Horse Defense Fund, which
is a fervent supporter of proposed legislation that would ban
slaughtering horses for meat in the United States, declared that "the
foreign-owned slaughter industry needs to understand that Americans will
never view horses as dinner."

It's a ringing statement, but it's not an entirely accurate one. As much
public support as the anti-slaughter bills have and as highly as we
regard the horse as a companion, co-worker and patriotic symbol,
Americans have made periodic forays into horse country, hungry for an
alternative red meat.

During World War II and the postwar years horsemeat appeared in the
butcher's cold case. A similar situation unfolded in 1973, when
inflation sent the cost of traditional meats soaring. Time magazine
reported that "Carlson's, a butcher shop in Westbrook, Connecticut, that
recently converted to horsemeat exclusively, now sells about 6,000
pounds of the stuff a day." The shop was evangelical in its promotion of
horse as a main course, producing a 28-page guide called "Carlson's
Horsemeat Cook Book," with recipes for chili con carne, beery horsemeat
and more.

This is a dizzying decline from the horse's heyday as a food in
Paleolithic times, when it was one of the chief prey of the
cave-dwellers of France, who painted gripping scenes of its pursuit.
Horse has been boiled, barbecued and cured in Europe and Asia ever
since. Mongol nomads relied on the blood of their steeds as they swept
westward. Marco Polo tells how they traveled "without provisions and
without making a fire, living only on the blood of their horses; for
every rider pierces a vein of his horse and drinks the blood."

The early Christian church did not look happily on pagan practices in
England and Iceland, where horse was consumed as part of religious
ritual. In the eighth century, Pope Gregory II instructed the missionary
Boniface to "tell them not to eat horses and impose severe punishments
to those who do it, because they are mean and evil." The Christian
prohibition against eating horse flesh (joining those already adopted by
Jews and Muslims) held strong in Europe for centuries.

France's later adoption of horse as a plat du jour stemmed from
pragmatism. Trying to strengthen its work force to meet the demands of
the Industrial Revolution, the French government decreed in 1853 that
each person consume 3.5 ounces of meat per day. At that time the price
of a pound of horse was half that of beef.

The shortages of the Franco-Prussian war (which eventually drove
starving Parisians to consume rats) sealed horse's stature as a "food of
the people." Today, since its cost is comparable to beef, the horse
butcheries of Paris are becoming an endangered species.

Hunger and the desire to nourish one's children are by far the most
effective tramplers of food taboos, and they have been the main forces
behind America's sporadic appreciation of horse as a culinary item. But
clannish customs also hold sway. Such practices recently influenced an
isolated pocket of America as surely as they did Odin- worshipers who
ate burnt equine offerings in the god's name.

Until the late 1970s, the Harvard Faculty Club served horse steaks as a
regular menu item. The dish was abandoned only when the rerouting of
Harvard Square traffic meant the delivery truck could no longer get
through. A 1998 Harvard Crimson article on the history of the club
states that "professors still recall the dish fondly." As they would -
its very oddity reinforced their sense of being members of a unique and
special tribe.

It can be said, awkwardly, that horses are America's sacred cows. But
our reverence stems not just from their noble equine attributes.

Our ability to commune wordlessly, with a shift in the saddle, the flick
of a rein, a whistle, forges a transcendent relationship. I have eaten
all manner of improbable items, from antelope to waterbug, but the fact
that horses so graciously did my bidding several decades ago means I
won't knowingly eat their kind (or dog, or dolphin) unless hard times
make it a necessity.

There are solid reasons to object to horse slaughter. But to imply that
it is somehow un-American doesn't go the distance. Americans have eaten
it, even enjoyed it, though never so much to keep it coming in times of
plenty, except at Harvard. Horsemeat has been a traditional hardship
food. Those seeking to ban it in Congress would serve best by ensuring
that we never miss it.

Christa Weil is the author of "Fierce Food: The Intrepid Diner's Guide
to the Unusual, Exotic and Downright Bizarre."

>
> There are solid reasons to object to horse slaughter. But to imply that
> it is somehow un-American doesn't go the distance. Americans have eaten
> it, even enjoyed it, though never so much to keep it coming in times of
> plenty, except at Harvard. Horsemeat has been a traditional hardship
> food. Those seeking to ban it in Congress would serve best by ensuring
> that we never miss it.
>
> Christa Weil is the author of "Fierce Food: The Intrepid Diner's Guide
> to the Unusual, Exotic and Downright Bizarre."

A response editorial in Time Magazine this week: The very best reason
NOT to eat horsemeat in the U.S. is that horsemeat is not regulated by
the USDA. Therefore, you would get all kinds of banned
pharmaceuticals, diseased animals, etc., if horsemeat were consumed
willy-nilly without some regulatory oversight.

N.

Nancy2 > wrote:

>A response editorial in Time Magazine this week: The very best reason
>NOT to eat horsemeat in the U.S. is that horsemeat is not regulated by
>the USDA. Therefore, you would get all kinds of banned
>pharmaceuticals, diseased animals, etc., if horsemeat were consumed
>willy-nilly without some regulatory oversight.

That's one reason, but another (or perhaps a related) reason
is that the horse-breeding industry is not ponying up the
cost of treating former show-horses and race-horses humanely.
Horses of no further value to them are shipped and slaughtered
under inhumane conditions. The right thing to do is to
place such horses with owners who will care for them, to the
extent this is possible; and to euthanize the rest according
to veterinary standards. Since the only form of euthanization
acceptable to veterianary groups is injection of phenobarbitol,
the resulting horsemeat cannot be safely eaten.

Steve

"Victor Sack" > wrote:
> We eat horses, don't we?

Everyone has their "sacred cows", don't they. For years people here in the
USA used to joke about the sacred cows roaming around in India. As if we
didn't have our own "sacred cows".

And it's not just horses that are "sacred cows" in the USA. Here's another
"sacred cow" we have in the USA... click if you da

http://i18.tinypic.com/400gys8.jpg

A few decades ago I read about eating such stuff in extremely undeveloped
areas. It was kind of like the restaurants where you get to pick out your
own live lobster. There's an advantage to such a system where you don't have
electricity and refrigeration. Keep your meal "live on the hoof" until you
are ready to prepare it.

"Victor Sack" wrote

> We eat horses, don't we?
>
> Christa Weil
>
> International Herald Tribune
>
> LONDON: Recently, an official for the American Horse Defense Fund, which
> is a fervent supporter of proposed legislation that would ban
> slaughtering horses for meat in the United States, declared that "the
> foreign-owned slaughter industry needs to understand that Americans will
> never view horses as dinner....

I prefer kittens.
More white meat on 'em.

Victor Sack wrote:
> We eat horses, don't we?



Speak for yourself, Bubba Vic!

;-)

gloria p

Puester > wrote:

> Victor Sack wrote:
> > We eat horses, don't we?
>
> Speak for yourself, Bubba Vic!
>
> ;-)

Right away, ma'am! I've tried horse Bratwürste once... bought 'em at
the local Costco-like establishment. They were wonderful - better than
any Bratwürste I have ever had, before or since, and that's saying a
lot. They don't sell horsemeat there any more, but there is a stall at
the market specialising in horsemeat and the stuff looks good. I've
never bought anything from them, though.

Bubba Vic

In article <xglHh.3225$zh.446@trnddc08>,
"wff_ng_7" > wrote:

>click if you da
>
> http://i18.tinypic.com/400gys8.jpg

Bark or Barf its all the same.

--
Would thou choose to meet a rat eating dragon, or
a dragon, eating rat? The answer of: I am somewhere
in the middle. "Me who is part taoist and part Christian".