Posted on 1/20/2010, 1:12:47 AM by fanfan
I WONDER how much time the average European spends thinking about how the delicious horse meat on the plate before them came to be there.
I admit, I am only assuming horse meat is delicious. I have never had any. Horse meat is not exactly a common item on the menu, or in supermarkets, in these parts.
In Europe, however, where public concern over the welfare of seals off Canada’s east coast has led to a EU-wide ban on the sale of imported seal products, horse meat is quite popular in many countries, including Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Poland, Sweden … well, you get the picture.
Italy alone slaughters more than 200,000 horses a year for human consumption.
How are the horses killed? Well, since this is the EU, where horror over the methods of the Canadian seal hunter led to a ban to stop that "cruelty," surely the butchery is humane.
The graphic answer, according to online sources, is that the horses are stunned by a captive bolt gun — a device which smashes the animal’s head, sometimes more than once, to render it unconscious — then hoisted upside down to have their jugulars cut so they bleed to death.
In comparison, Canadian seal hunters, usually with a rifle but at times with a club or hakapik, strike the sea animal’s head to render the seal unconscious, then cut arteries near the front flippers so they bleed to death.
If the two methods sound similar, it’s because they are. Yet one is labelled inhumane.
Hypocrisy knows no borders, of course, but the Europeans are masters of the game. They are fine with force-feeding ducks and geese to produce tasty foie gras from their fattened livers, produce most animal skins — from some 6,000 fur farms — sold in the world fur market, and, as seen, slaughter vast numbers of horses every year for humans to eat, and yet still react with outrage, some of it politically-calculated, at the deaths of abundant seals.
Well, the Inuit are calling them on it.
"It is bitterly ironic that the EU, which seems entirely at home with promoting massive levels of agri-business and the raising and slaughtering of animals in highly industrialized conditions, seeks to preach some sort of selective elevated morality to the Inuit."
So said, with complete justification, Mary Simon, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, last week. Simon, head of the national group, spoke out as a coalition of Inuit organizations and individuals from Canada and Greenland filed a lawsuit in Europe last week against the EU and its seal products ban.
The exemption to that ban that the Europeans, no doubt congratulating themselves for their cultural sensitivity, tossed the Inuit’s way is worthless, say Simon and other Inuit leaders. Just as under a previous EU ban in the 1980s, they point out, the result of the new ban has been a collapse of a market for their products — exemption or not.
The EU’s ban is cultural bias, "at best," Simon charged. The Inuit have hunted seals for generations, but they’ve been essentially told their traditions don’t stack up when compared to Europeans’ votes.
Look, I’m no more in favour of the unnecessary suffering of animals than the next person. But slaughtering animals for their meat and other products is a fact of life. Lots of folks who would be horrified at being in a slaughterhouse think nothing of buying meat at the grocery.
Of course killing animals should be done humanely. But it’s clear to me, from the big money interests of many animal rights and environmental groups — which raise tens of millions annually through anti-seal hunt campaigns — and outright lies of hunt protesters who use pictures of whitecoat pups, which are illegal to hunt, to sell a certain message, that this isn’t about how "humane" the seal hunt is.
I’m sure that no matter what methods Canadian sealers used, there would be a powerful lobby poised against the industry.
The high-profile success of the anti-seal hunt campaigns, and high-profile stars who flock to the cause of protecting cute animals, have been a beacon for animal rights folks worldwide.
Anyway, while Ottawa fights the EU ban through the WTO, and the Inuit — whom I wish success — take the Europeans to court for destroying their livelihoods, China could prove a huge market for seal products.
Under the ban, by the way, EU fishermen are still free to shoot as many seals as needed — to protect fish stocks. Go figure.
Horsemeat is excellent. Fine grained and very lean, it sort of splits the difference between beef and venison.
Horsenpheffer!
Spaghetti and horse balls.
Horses saved many from starvation during the World Wars, but the are plenty of less noble stuff to eat in this day and time..
Horses saved many from starvation during the World Wars, but the are plenty of less noble stuff to eat in this day and time..
I was in central Europe from 2002 to 2009.
I never saw any horsemeat.
From Russia there’s a story of horse and rabbit pies made from the meat of each animal in equal proportions—one horse to one rabbit.
LOL!
hippophagia bump
Don’t get enough of these threads.
i believe our country is in dire trouble. One of my favorite foods is MEAT. My squirrels will translate well. Corn fed, fat and muscular, they are an ideal meat source, along with the constant flow of bambi's. I like beef and chicken, but "beggars can't be choosers".
Meat. It's on the menu...
BROWN LEADING IN MA
--Adam Baldwin as Jayne Cobb, Firefly.
There is a cultural divide that keeps people from eating horseflesh, but as a matter of good environmental management, the vast herds of feral horses that roam many parts of the West ought to be harvested, and the horseflesh, cheval meat, which is regarded as a delicacy in many parts of the world, could show up on the menus in places like Las Vegas.
Or perhaps it already has, and a clientele is steadily being built up.
Simply “adopting” a mustang or wild burro, does not remove them from the environment. So long as they live, and reproduce, they will crop down and suppress growth in arid lands, to the detriment of other native grazing species.
Lewis & Clark, on their great Corps of Discovery expedition, were reduced to eating horse several times when game became nonexistent, particularly in the wintertime, I Suppose. Dog was also on the menu quite a bit. They also boiled down boots and leather items, that’s not an old wives tale or a movie cliche’. That’s Hungry! What’s for Dinner?
The problem with the enviros, the mean well (some of them) but they cause more suffering of the herds because there is no free market for horses. Glue factories are real too, but if they go away, then the herds die because they aren’t “worth” anything, in fact they are a liability that has to be fed, watered, cared to, etc.
How is that an improvement?
Horses are made of meat. Meat is protein.
“I was in central Europe from 2002 to 2009.
I never saw any horsemeat.”
Maybe you didn’t see it, but you ate plenty if you ever ordered something made with beef.
I ate more, even if no one else did. It was good.
If they do John Kerry better keep his horse face here.
He didn't do well with it and the horse counter didn't last 6 months.
From a practical standpoint horses are obsolete as a beast of burdon. They have too much overhead to be pets. Ohh well. Chowdown.
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