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Beating a delicious horse
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.
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.
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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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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.
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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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