quote: Moved by appeals to protect the noble horse, the U.S. House (of Representatives) voted on Thursday to ban the slaughter of horses for food, potentially saving 90,000 animals a year from being served as a delicacy to diners overseas.
posted
I have had horse--raw. It was very bloody and very sweet. I had to eat it. My wife and I got married in Japan 6 months after we married here. It was also during New Years.
There were lots of celebrations, lots of family, and 2 large plates of raw horse. I was expected to eat it.
I had to choke it down, but I have to admit it was very sweet.
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posted
I didn't mean "Why?" as in "Why in the world would you want to do such a morally despicable thing, Porter? I'm so ashamed to have any association with you at all after hearing such a loathsome confession from you. Now either justify yourself or excuse yourself from polite society until further notice."
I meant "Why?" as in "Oh, you want to eat horse. Hmm. I wonder why."
Me, I have no desire to eat a horse. Or a pig. Neither is kosher.
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posted
Well, there goes my fast food franchise idea,
"Pony on up to Mr. Ed's Last Stand.
We put the Neigh in your Neighborhood.
We have the only fast food that delivers itself, and talk about fast. You may be the lucky person who gets to devour a burger made from last years Triple Crown loser.
He may of come in second at the Kentucky Derby, but he won't be second rate food.
Or ask about our pony meal for the kids.
Want it to go? We supply the lassoo.
Each herd culled daily for your dining pleasure.
So hoof it on down to the most authentic cowboy restaurant on the praire.
posted
It these congresspersons ever really looked at the abandoned and feral horses that infest the Great Basin Desert, they might not be so quick to criticize the reasonable efforts that the BLM is forced to take to control their numbers and prevent starvation. Somebody read My Friend Flica a few too many times in their youth or childhood.
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posted
One of the major problems and reasons why these laws were created was people neglecting and even stealing horses to be sent to "kill auctions" Also there were wild mustangs being rounded up for this purpose at one point. Horse people and animal activists got the most upset when Ferdinand winner of the 86 derby was likely slaughtered for dog food in Japan.
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Are horses entitled to better treatment than chickens?
I do think its sad to breed and raise horses to race and if a leg is injured, to simply shoot the horse and feed it to the dogs. But I think the sin is shooting the horse so as to avoid having to keep feeding it and paying for it, not that it was fed to another animal or to another countries people.
If people in Japan have a taste for horse meat let them eat horse meat. Don't let several viewings of movies like "Sea Biscuit, and "Dreamer" make you think horses ought not to be eaten.
People in India think its wrong to eat beef, but they don't try to stop us from eating it. If somebody ran a cattle ranch in India and exported cows to be eaten in the US, they wouldnt try to stop them.
Why should this case be any different?
If you think eating animals is wrong, well fine. But arguing some animals are for eating and others are not is just silly IMO.
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quote:People in India think its wrong to eat beef, but they don't try to stop us from eating it. If somebody ran a cattle ranch in India and exported cows to be eaten in the US, they wouldnt try to stop them.
I think they might, actually. They would be in the wrong, but Hindu nationalists are a force in the Indian Parliament.
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Pixiest there are, but at one time they didn't apply to BLM horses (mustangs), also people do break laws and continue to break laws.
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posted
Many Indians, including Hindi, will eat beef. A key thing to remember is that cows are sacred but steers aren't for many Indian Hindi. Plus, there are lots of Muslims and Christians and Sikhs in India, in some regions huge numbers, and they can all eat beef (and do).
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quote:Also there were wild mustangs being rounded up for this purpose at one point.
Feral horses (there's no such thing as a wild mustang any more, if there ever was.)are still being rounded up to keep them from starving or dying of thirst. Now the government usually keeps them in holding pens for ever. Because the paperwork to "prove" that you aren't going to sell them to a processing plant, is so onerous and the condition of the horses so poor that adoption programs don't work.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Many Indians, including Hindi, will eat beef. A key thing to remember is that cows are sacred but steers aren't for many Indian Hindi. Plus, there are lots of Muslims and Christians and Sikhs in India, in some regions huge numbers, and they can all eat beef (and do).
I was not asserting that stopping beef exports or ranches would in any way be a rational thing for the Indians to do; I was merely pointing out that it might possibly happen, because of the way religious fanatics tend to ignore 'minorities' in their country even when they are in fact majorities.
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quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Many Indians, including Hindi, will eat beef. A key thing to remember is that cows are sacred but steers aren't for many Indian Hindi. Plus, there are lots of Muslims and Christians and Sikhs in India, in some regions huge numbers, and they can all eat beef (and do).
In the Vedas there's a section saying that a king should slaughter cows and serve them to his foreign guests if it is their custom to eat beef. Cows being sacred is more of a cultural thing than a religious thing - cows were extremely critical to agriculture, so killing them for food was seen was seen as a Very Bad Thing. Making it morally bad as well as economically bad made the rule stick better.
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posted
I'm finding it difficult understanding how it is immoral to eat horse meat. After all, if you can ranch 'em, race 'em, and use their hoofs for glue and hide for leather, why can't we use their meat for food? Makes use of all the material. I've watched Mr. Ed, and seen horse racing, and all that jazz, but I don't have any stigma to idolize these animals.
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posted
breyerchic04 directed me to this thread (I've been absent here for a while due to a death in the family and also being horribly behind on my work!!). I agree that it potentially walks a fine line between this and banning more meat consumption. My personal feelings on it are that it's not inappropriate to eat horses, as much as I adore them, and I don't think I could ever eat them myself unless I had no other choice. I don't find it immoral to eat them - I don't find it immoral to eat dogs, either.
What I do find immoral is the brutal and inconsiderate way animals are treated while being raised for slaughter and while being slaughtered. I'd so much rather see a bill preventing inhumane slaughter and setting humane laws for raising meat animals (at least enough space for them that they can walk around freely; appropriate foods rather than feeding herbivores processed carcasses; etc.). That way, horses and all other animals would be safe from extreme mistreatment and violent, fearful deaths.
It is possible to find humane-raised meat, but it's expensive. My grocery bills will never be the same again.
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quote:Originally posted by Tante Shvester: I still think it is not normal to eat rats.
You know, on a completely visceral level, I agree. But rationally, I kind of wonder why it's okay to eat one rodent (say, rabbit) and not another. Disease associations? Perveived intelligence? Those long, leathery, creepy looking tails?
(Oh, an I've had rabbit. And alligator. Rabbit's not bad, though kind of fatty. Alligator is tough and greasy. Don't recommend it.)
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That's odd that you found rabbit to be fatty. Every rabbit I've eaten was very lean, so much so that the meat would dry out if care wasn't taken with cooking.
posted
Are squirrels rodents? Because I know people who have eaten them, mostly out of desperation during the great depression and world war II, partially because my grandmother's rule about hunting was you had to eat what you shot.
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posted
I disagree about alligator, Sterling, I found it very good. I've had it fried and in gumbo.
Also, I'm not sure if this is the same, or even true, but I have been told that I was eating nutria rat before. I was at a family friends house in Houma, Louisiana (about an hour south of NO). She was about a bajillionth generation native to the Acadiana bayous and we were eating gumbo at her house and she said that there was nutria in it. I didn't believe her, so she showed me a nice fresh nutria carcass hanging to dry out back. Now, it is very possible that she was just messing with me, and had the dead rat for other reasons. It is also entirely possible that I ate nutria rat.
Also, even though this will make this post far too long, this thread reminded me of a passage I just finished in Tom Robbin's Another Roadside Attraction. So I will quote it for you:
quote:John Paul was untroubled by any undue reverence for meat.
"Look," he said, "the world is overrun with animals, great and small, fanged and feathered, all eating one another in happy harmony. Man is the party pooper. He'll eat pig flesh and pretend it's pork. He'll devour a chicken but not a kitten, a turkey but not a Turk. It isn't that he is principled, particularly. In fact, we all gut somebody every day. But it's sneaky, symbolic, unappetizing, ego-supportive, duty to God and country--never with a good pot roast in mind. No cheerful, honest cannibalism. Alas, alas."
And, because this isn't long enough, yet, I will quote another passage that comes in the next paragraph. This one more because I'm curious if it's true, and you might be the people to tell me:
quote:"The cow became a sacred symbol to the Hindu because it gave milk and chops and hides. It nourished the babies and kept the old folks warm. Because it provided so many good life-supporting things, it was regarded as an embodiment of the Universal Mother, hence holy. Then it occurred to some monk or other, some abstract scholarly kook, as you would say, that gee, folks, since the cow is holy, we maybe shouldn't be eating it and robbing its utter. So now the Hindu has got sacred cows up to here but no more milk and steaks. They starve in plain view of holy herds so big only Hopalong Cassidy could stop them if they took a notion to stampede. The spiritual man's beef against beef is the result of a classic distortion. It's another case of lost origins and inverted values."
posted
I also don't have a problem with people eating horse or dog or cat. I prefer that they not eat my Oberon, but in theory, I don't see what the difference is either.
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posted
"I'm finding it difficult understanding how it is immoral to eat horse meat.."
quote:horses, which hold an exalted place in American lore as intelligent companions and long-lived workmates, should not risk gruesome death in a slaughterhouse.
Lore also holds that Representatives are neither intelligent nor working... ...so Congressmeat should soon become available as a substitute.
quote:Originally posted by aspectre: Lore also holds that Representatives are neither intelligent nor working... ...so Congressmeat should soon become available as a substitute.
Now there's a meat that's tough and greasy.
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posted
I think nutria is quite good, as is alligator, though it is a bit tough. I don't know enough about this case to discuss it in depth, but my opinion is that if someone wants to eat a horse, let them eat a horse. Horses are one of my favorite animals and I would never consider eating one unless I had no other options (same applies to dogs or cats), but if it's ok to eat other animals, including fairly intelligent ones like pigs, why not horses?
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: I actually want to eat horse.
I wonder where I can get some.
A wise man once said, "If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak."
Jayne? Is that you?
They occasionally eat rat in some rural parts of China. You can still get it from vendors in Beijing. It has simply become practical because famine is still a very real thing in China and their quisine has adapted to include just about ANYTHING that is edible.
I once ate pig skin, that still had the hairs sticking out of it (I was trying to be open minded). I had goat gaul bladder once as well.
Unless they are endanger of extinction (like Whales) I don't see any reason why horses should get any special status.
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