urbpan: (with chicken)
urbpan ([personal profile] urbpan) wrote2006-09-08 01:27 pm

Why not eat horses?, part 2

I thought I'd just posted about the horse slaughter issue, but apparently it's been a full year. The link in the previous sentence leads to my post about an email (from an animal protection organization I'm interested in), asking us all to lobby congress to make it illegal to slaughter horses for food. Apparently the House of Representatives has approved a bill to this effect.


My feeling is, if there are thousands of horses that need to be destroyed, why not sell the meat for food? One zoo director has become involved, as well, because the big cats that live in zoos eat mainly processed horse meat.

If you are against factory farming, or slaughterhouses, you must be against them for all animals. There is no important neurological difference between a cow and a horse that makes slaughter less humane for horses. Any opposition to horse slaughter comes from a sentimental attachment to one species over another, and is not logically consistent, and in my opinion, is basically indefensible.

There's also a xenophobic aspect to the bill: Americans don't eat horses, but the French and Japanese do. This is why the slaughter of cows will never be made illegal in the U.S.--We'd all starve! But since those weird foreigners are the dirty horse-eaters, why not ban horse slaughter?

I do not support factory farms, but I am in favor of humane slaughter. Treating animals like food does not bother me. Treating animals like some kind of inanimate raw material, like iron ore or something, that bothers me. Farm animals should be respected, their lives should not be misery, and we should expect meat to be expensive in exchange for treating our animals well.

[identity profile] cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 06:39 pm (UTC)(link)
evidently a whole shitload of countries eat horse meat - wikipedia has a great entry on horse meat, very enlightening.

the debate on the subject in [livejournal.com profile] pet_debate was pretty infuriating because people can't decide which aspect of it is more horrifying to them. it seems like, for the most part, people are complaining about inhumane slaughter but, shit, that happens in every freaking slaughterhouse in this fine country. horses aren't the exception to the rule.

[identity profile] ms-cantrell.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 06:44 pm (UTC)(link)
i'm always stunned at how many people are fans of the humane society and pick up their ground pork at the grocery store every week.
i'll go out and shoot a moose before i get hungry enough to eat anything coughed up by the meat industry.

[identity profile] cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 06:50 pm (UTC)(link)
ha ha! i'll happily eat meat though i'd rather eat organic and humanely slaughtered animals. i need my own chickens, is the thing.

[identity profile] ms-cantrell.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 06:56 pm (UTC)(link)
i missed chicken for a long time, but i'm too squeamish, i'll admit it. i stick to morningstar for my chicken-like urges :) and even that comes with guilt, since it's an agricorp company.

btw - that pet_debate thread was interesting. it's a wonder your head didn't explode.

[identity profile] cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 06:58 pm (UTC)(link)
my fave fake chicken is quorn because it's totally the best texture. i don't know how that company is, politically, though.

i think my head did explode a little bit. some people seem not to understand the concept of 'debate.'

[identity profile] ms-cantrell.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 07:11 pm (UTC)(link)
i haven't tried quorn, but i'll try it next time i'm at the store. life is too short to stress a lot about the politics of everything. sometimes it's good to not know.

[identity profile] stonelizard.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 07:23 pm (UTC)(link)
Linda McCartney sausages are also fantastic if you are looking for a meat substitute... tastes fantastic with lashings of gravy and roast onions...mmm

[identity profile] ms-cantrell.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 07:45 pm (UTC)(link)
ooh. i'll look for those for my husband. i'm a wimp, and can't handle anything that tastes like mammal anymore (when i stopped eating meat, my alternatives were tofu and tvp), but he really misses having red meat in the house, so he'll appreciate that quite a bit.

thanks!

[identity profile] urbpan.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 07:46 pm (UTC)(link)
That poor woman! First she dies of cancer, now they're making her into sausages?!

/tasteless

[identity profile] ms-cantrell.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 07:55 pm (UTC)(link)
LMAO!!

sorry.

[identity profile] cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 09:51 pm (UTC)(link)
LOLLLLLLLLL!!!

[identity profile] cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com 2006-09-08 10:06 pm (UTC)(link)
based on your other comments, you might not like it. it's inescapably meaty.