We Should Just Eat Horses

A legislator in Missouri thinks we should eat horses because it would “jump-start the ailing equine industry”. The poor equine industry has had a heart-attack and needs a defibrillator. I feel sorry for this industry already! Rep. Jim Viebrock introduced legislation to circumvent the federal ban on horse slaughter. Guess who supports him? The state’s director of agriculture and all the folks who send horses to slaughter. Heck, some horse “advocates” think it’s a nifty idea because nothing says “I love horses” like “I eat their carved up bodies”. With this bedrock of logic, I’m giving up veganism and eating horses. Thank goodness for folks like Viebrock.

You will probably find many things about the article offensive (cows are raised for us to eat, horses to win the Kentucky Derby – EAT COWS, SAVE HORSES!). However, this quote rubbed me wrong in many ways:

The top eight countries, with China, Mexico and Kazakhstan at the top of the list, consume about 4.7 million horses a year. Most countries,mainly English-speaking countries, do not consume horse meat because of its taboo, not for safety reasons.

That’s right, yo, it’s those foreigners with their non-English speaking ways eating the horses. Us English-speakers think horse meat and go TABOO. Clearly, we are pioneers of right-thought and correct-actions – English does that to you.

Thing is, that’s production of horses for slaughter, not consumption. China produces 396 million pounds of horse flesh annually (they kill 1.65 million). If they actually ate all that horse meat, that’s about 0.29 lbs per person annually. Australia ranks 11th in horse meat production and, if they actually ate all that flesh, Australians would consume 2.41 lbs per person annually, more than China, Mexico, Brazil and Italy … a few of those non-English speaking top ten nations. You know who is also in the top ten production of horses for slaughter? The United States – we’re number 9! We don’t eat horses, of course, that was officially taboo in 2007, but in 2008, we still “produced” 108,000 horses for slaughter. Canada, number 12 in terms of production, “produces” 88,000 horses and, if they ate all that dead horse flesh, they’d be eating 1.08 lbs per person annually, more than China, Brazil and Italy.

I think it’s safe to say eating dead horse has little to do with speaking English and please to not bring that up as a salient point, mkay thanks.

Of course I oppose this bill. We should not be slaughtering animals, period. We shouldn’t be breeding them for racing or “food”. They should not be bred, raised, broke or gentled so that we may ride, parade, bridle them and then conveniently discard them when they become old or injured. Horse riders talk about the partnership, that bond, the special relationship you must have in order to sit astride an equine. I think a relationship and bond can exist. I’ve met a lot of wonderful horse people and happy horses. But, I do not think it’s an equal relationship, so it cannot be a true partnership, not when one partner exerts domination and control over the other. That said, it seems rather strange to end a “partnership” by slitting the throat of the other party. Surely, we can come up with better solutions than reviving the struggling, bedraggled, emo-tastic equine-killing industry?

Now, I think anyone who finds horse slaughter morally repugnant and still eats cows, chickens, pigs or other sentient nonhumans should get a grip. There isn’t any difference between eating a horse and eating a cow. They are dead animals you don’t need to eat for survival.