Beating a delicious horse

[urbpan]

I know I've brought up this subject many times before, but it has come to my attention (to my email box, in fact) that Time Magazine has now written an article on it. I was considering, earlier today, to bring up the general subject of the human uses of animals, but I'll table that for a little later.

In short, why are horses on the short list of domestic animals that Americans don't eat? (And in fact there are laws against eating horses in some states.) The last paragraph of the article sums it up pretty neatly:

It's not that I don't think killing horses is cruel. It's just that I think killing chickens, pigs, sheep and cows is equally bad. Morality based on aesthetics is pretty shallow. In fact, the only weird part about eating horse was that, unlike with bacon or rib eye, we kept picturing the animal, which was kind of gross. Nonetheless, until I decide to stop my less-than-noble practice of eating other animals, I've got little choice but to order up some more horse.
(Joel Stein is the author of this article.)

I pretty much agree. While I don't eat meat, unless it comes from an animal whose life and care I knew well (I eat pork sausage from my farm), I don't see any problem with eating horse--or rabbit, or guinea pig, or whatever. Animals are animals, and they all are capable of suffering. No domestic mammal is hurt more or less from a trip to the slaughterhouse, or from a life in a stall, pen, or cage.

Comments

[vyoma.livejournal.com]

Why are Americans squicked by the idea of eating insects, for that matter? Anything one can say about a large beetle one can pretty much say about a crustacean. There are all sorts of odd cultural taboos about food. I guess very few people want a cow when they're kids, but lots of them always wanted a pony or a pet bunny (which really does taste just like chicken).

[badnoodles.livejournal.com]

Americans are so squicked about insects because, for the majority of us, the only insects we ever encounter are cockroaches and flies, and perhaps wasps or butterflies. (Disgusting pests, poisonous pests, or Pretties, in other words). People don't want to eat things that live on garbage, sting them, or are particularly beautiful.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I hadn't seen it that way before (and I've done my share of thinking about entomophagy and food taboos); very interesting.

I had oversimplified it to be about Americans' belief that food is sterile, and the association with insects in food with contamination.

One day while working in a cafe I discovered that a yellow jacket had crawled into a flavor syrup bottle nozzle and died. I had to make a judgment about whether the syrup was contaminated or not. Then I realized that we also had honey...

[violet-serene.livejournal.com]

At the co-op where I work we have bulk honey, and every so often a fly or gnat will wiggle its way into the dispenser. We have to pull the honey off the floor and loss it for legal/health code reasons, but that always seems to me rather a bit hypocritical, considering. ("Oh no, you mean an *insect* touched my honey? Ewww!")

[qassandra.livejournal.com]

I don't think there's any problem with making personal decisions based on aesthetics. If someone thinks horses are too pretty to eat, that's a good enough reason to choose not to eat them, just as it's acceptable to paint your walls blue or crop a photograph for aesthetic reasons. I would agree, however, that it's a very poor basis for public policy.

[droserary.livejournal.com]

Agreed. The assumption we're fighting against, though, is cemented in sociology and culture. There's this big ball of religion and society that most people are indoctrinated into in childhood. Those early impressions of what is "food" and what is "pet" are hard to break down and reassemble, especially since we're so emotionally attached to some animal companions. Likewise, I'm sure there are places in the world that wouldn't think twice about chomping away on our domesticated animals while abhoring our taste for cow.

I suppose you could say common sense is bracing itself against society again. While the arguments for protecting one animal and eating another fall apart in the common sense view sans emotional attachment, society responds by affirming its stance with (sometimes) irrational arguments. I don't always find them irrational, though, and I think there's a lot to be said for the different kinds of domestication we've done over the millenia. The purpose is key. Back when I still ate meat, I don't think I could ever have brought myself to eat horse, dog, cat, or parakeet. I based my deicision for vegetarianism on more reasons than just suffering (or else I'd have to be vegan in order to remain consistent in my logic). Having been a vegetarian for more than 6 years now, I'd have to say that even if suffering was eliminated, I don't think I could ever eat another animal again, even if their life was full.

Something you might find interesting, as I did when I first started making decisions about what I ate, is a sort of essay by Carol J. Adams, a feminist author. I read it 6 years ago in a Religion and Ethics class my freshman year of college:

Adams, Carol J. 1993. "Feeding on Grace: Institutional Violence, Christianity, and Vegetarianism," from C. Pinches and J. McDaniel, eds., Good News for Animals?, Orbis, 1993, pp. 142-159. (Couldn't find it online, sorry, but it's good enough to seek out).

[rererepetition.livejournal.com]

I agree completely with what both you and the author of the article said. I am a vegetarian, and I believe that all animals are equal, even that spiders are equal to horses. I won't even kill bugs.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

The problem with treating all animals with equal compassion is that some animals are very small and get themselves killed by living amongst us. Like you, I don't deliberately kill most insects and spiders (I do kill grain moths and mosquitoes) but I sometimes kill other little creatures by working: digging a hole kills worms, moving logs kills slugs and centipedes, walking on a sidewalk kills ants. I try to minimize my impact, but at some point you have to draw a line and get on with life.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

http://www.modernman3.com/lyric_bumper.htm

these guys got a song for everything!

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[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

the ultimate meat eaters imho are the various forms of scavengers... the circle of life. things die. there are things that eat dead things.

what's the difference between fresh road kill, and store bought meat? the money ;) on a working farm, with working animals, if they aren't working, they get eaten, esp in the "good old days". these days, we have SO MUCH FOOD, that i doubt farmer johnboy eats his plow horse when he has other choices. sentiment? maybe. back in the day? food was more dear i expect.

it amuses me that with SO many insects, and an RDA allotment for how many pounds a year you're allowed to eat as a byproduct of eating veggies, that we don't eat more. better: some insects eat meat. they love it. so do birds, squirrels, deer, and other "vegetarian" animals. trace minerals, salts, stuff.

so. well. food. comes from life, from materials from a star (for the most part), powered by sunlight (more or less). i'd say we are star stuff, but me? i'm made of meat. i live in my box.

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[bluelinegoddess.livejournal.com]

I was reminded by your comment of "vegetarian" animals eating meat - I had a friend who owned a horse that would KILL rabbits and eat them, and if there was roadkill on a trail ride, she'd have to literally drag him away from it. My horse is fond of Taco Bell tacos (which I suspect are horsemeat) and McDonald's quarter pounders. On the other side, I had a dog that grazed like a cow - given the choice of fresh grass or dog food, he went for the grass every time.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

while that sounds shocking, i'm not surprised.

i've seen a "murder" of crows assault some squirrels and eat them alive, yow. birds.

i'm told of a burrow/ass that routinely kills intruder dogs on the property and eats them. starting with the head/brains. whoa.

mammals drop and die in the woods all the time. finding an intact skeleton is rare. the other animals consider it a source of minerals :) esp antlers. rodents love'm.

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[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Food is food, and animals have no compassion for other species. It is very weird when herbivorous species eat animals. Hippos occasionally eat carrion, too.

People are always surprised when turkeys and chickens eat vertebrate prey--bugs are fair game, but when a chicken I raised stole dead mice from the bucket to run away and eat them, that freaked people out. Meat is meat.

Most birds, even--especially--songbirds are carnivorous predators. Chickadees and robins eat animals (little ones) whenever they can.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

birds really go for suet, esp in the winter. yum. nutrients.

course, it freaked a vegan friend of mine out to learn what suet IS.

hah.

in the theme of eating the tasty animals: (stolen from elsewhere)

o there's no wrong way to eat a rhesus
o neko wafers. ^..^

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[stephanietberry.livejournal.com]

"what's the difference between fresh road kill, and store bought meat?"

Well, money, yes, but also road kill is very often terribly bruised, or the stomach might have ruptured, or other interesting stuff that makes it difficult to get to the plate in a tasty way. I have, by the way, eaten a deer I ran over, and I think next time I'll leave it for the vultures and flies.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

"Until I decide to stop my less-than-noble practice of eating other animals, I've got little choice but to order up some more horse."

Clever wrap up. But by that logic, he's left himself no choice but to grill some golden retriever as well. (Which I hear the Chinese have no problem with: some dogs are "pets" and some are "dinner.")

I think it's okay to raise animals for food. I don't think it's okay to make them suffer psychological or physical stress, or pain/fear along the way, no matter their looks or their intelligence or lack thereof -- because that makes us look like cruel, heartless, self-obsessed megalomaniacs. Which we are, but it's good to keep that to civilized limit when we have the choice. I'm not sure why compassion, empathy, and human kidness is held in such low regard in these matters.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

Good points. I also would have no problem with some dogs being pets and some dogs being food--the same arrangement that goats and ducks have in the U.S.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

I'm curious how one can do that when one has loved an animal (your dogs) directly. How can you dissociate from the others and not see them all as the same in spirit?

(I personally think that if humans have a "soul" -- which I'm not convinced of, I simply don't know -- then there's no reason animals don't either. I don't think intelligence or self-awareness is the defining factor.)

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

I dissociate individual animals from their species all the time. It's built into working at a zoo that's a working farm and a wildlife sanctuary. I eat sausage from a pig that I've pet (and was named "Mocha Chip"I). Just because one animal is a pet it doesn't mean that you can never eat an animal of that species. I hope to have pet chickens some day.

[roaming.livejournal.com]

I know that people can do it, obviously. :-) I'm not sure it's "built in". For one personal, first-hand example: years ago friends of mine who lived in Vermont bought pigs with the intention of eating/selling them. A few months down the road, the pigs were pets because, they told me, they "had personalities" and were affectionate and intelligent. For them, rather than being able to dissociate pet versus meat, once one of the kind became a "companion animal", they couldn't continue to see the others as meat on the hoof, any more than they could eat their own.

Obviously it's a person by person thang. :-)

Frankly, though, I'd much rather eat meat that had been well treated and well loved and humanely/kindly/personally slaughtered by "loving" hands than what we get with factory farming conveyor belt methods.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

http://www.modernman3.com/dog.mp3
http://www.modernman3.com/lyric_dog.htm

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[bezigebij.livejournal.com]

Could horses be comparable to the Indians holy cow.

In Dutch there are different names for "head", "mouth" and "leg" when referring to animals or humans. I find it interesting that horses are the exception to this - their head, mouth and leg is referred to by the human term. They have a symbolism and regalness in society.

But, then again, you can easily buy horse meat here - mostly imported from Spain.