So Obama legalized horse slaughter, your feelings?

More info please. Do you mean slaughter for food?

Don’t simply blame Barack Obama for this, O.K.? That is a misrepresentation, or perhaps, merely a misunderstanding of the facts. It’s not like Obama simply issued an executive order authorizing the slaughter of horses for food. It, the lifting of a 5 year old ban on USDA inspection of horse meat, which would pave the way for the renewed slaughter of horses in the U.S., was a provision that passed through congress and was included under a spending bill that Obama signed in order to make sure that the government wouldn’t shut down through December 18 .

I don’t care. I’m not interested in eating horse meat, but I don’t have a problem with it being legal (especially when cow meat is totally fine).

@Aethelflaed That is certainly another aspect to all of this. People, and it varies from culture to culture, separate animals into those that are o.k. to eat and those that are not o.k. to eat. E.g., I suspect that there are more than a mere handful of people who are fine with the idea of separating a mother and lamb and slaughtering the lamb for it’s meat but are appalled by the idea of slaughtering horses for meat. It’s not really all that rational, in my opinion.

I agree with @lillycoyote – it is all about the culture. I personally don’t think it makes much difference whether you want to eat whale meat or beef or goat or horse, as long as they have a happy healthy existence for their life and are slaughtered humanely, you can eat what you want.

Who cares? Because horses are “pretty” we shouldn’t eat them? But pigs, cows, and chicken are all okay?

I have a problem with it. Call it culture, I don’t care. I just don’t like it. And I am far from vegetarian.

You preferred that he’d say “neigh”?

It doesn’t bother me, I am glad the meat is being inspected.

From my understanding, the bill isn’t about lifting a ban from slaughtering horses.

In 2006, the US banned the government from inspecting plants that butchered horses for safe human food consumption. Without this service, horse meat could not be shipped to other countries where there is a market for it. What ended up happening is that live horses are being shipped to foreign countries where there is no control over how humanely they are cared for or slaughtered. Now that there are no stringent USDA controls and procedures being enforced, it puts the people consuming the meat sold in other countries that process it at risk.While in the US, horse meat is generally only used for zoo and circus animal food (it was banned from being used in dog food in the ‘70s), these exotic animals have been under potential risks since the health of horses slaughtered, not to mention the drugs they are given, are no longer monitored.

Even PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) gave a tacit nod of approval for the passing of this bill. Their stance is that while it doesn’t support their ultimate goal of having all animals live a quality life until they die naturally, it is a step in the right direction.

excellent. a victory for the free market and cooks everywhere.

I don’t know what I think, but I know many people I know eat Bambi, and deer are beautiful to me and I find it difficult to think about eating venison meat.

Horse is pretty tasty. From what I read most of the meat is going overseas but I’m still looking forward to some good local basashi and barbecue.

Shows he’s no one trick pony I suppose.

I’ve always been interested in trying horse. I hear its really chewy and gamey though….

I wouldn’t choose to eat horse for the same reasons I wouldn’t choose to eat dog (they are favourite animals of mine) but I have no problem with others eating horse providing, like @rooeytoo said, the animals are treated and killed humanely.

@uberbatman in my opinion it’s not particularly chewy or gamey – obviously that statement depends to no small extent on the quality, cut, and preparation of the meat. Horse has something of a light, sweet, taste to it. I’ve heard/read a lot of people relating it to a cross between deer and beef – I definitely get that – but to me it’s more reminiscent of bison. It is very lean and benefits greatly from some care when cooking, particular cuts/slicing when raw, and preparations that compliment the sweetness; dipped with soy sauce, marinated, grilled, or barbecued (bulgogi style probably being my second favorite after basashi).

I’m ok with this.

@wonderingwhy man… you just made me really hungry. I definitely want to try it now lol

I don’t have any problem with this. But I’m the evil dude who raised cows who became like pets and then we slaughtered them and ate them. Best tasting beef I ever had.

Lets face it the only reason horses as are species are not extinct is because of so called cruel sports like racing and show jumping. Farming them for food is doing the species a favour as PETA are hell bent on getting rid of all other reasons to keep them alive.

If we eat them, we’d have a glue shortage.

Horses have always been slaughtered for food and you’ve eaten them. Trust me.

I don’t see the big deal. I mean from my personal perspective, yes, it’s horrible. But objectively – we’re completely fine with killing off anything else we eat, so why not horses? I think it’s a bit absurd to make the president (any president) look bad for letting people eat horses while most of the country is scarfing down cows. Same thing.

@wundayatta May I ask you a tangential question since I see that kind of self-referential ‘I like it and it tastes damn good, in your face, cows’ response quite often. Do you get off on rubbing it in, so to speak?

@Simone_De_Beauvoir I was going to say I get off by rubbing it too… but then I saw the in, and the joke doesn’t work quite as well

@Simone_De_Beauvoir It’s because I find some arguments from animal lovers to be generally disingenuous. I think one can love ones charges yet understand they are there for another kind of service.

I don’t know how many people realize that if people all became vegetarians, millions of cows and pigs and chickens and turkeys and sheep, etc, etc would be destroyed. There would no longer be a reason to keep them and feed them. Perhaps they would be let go to fend for themselves, but eventually, just like with deer, we’d have to start killing them and burying them (without eating them), just to save ourselves.

@wundayatta Well I realize that kind of thing…but we are creating thousands of animals for our consumption only – they were never meant to be.

@Simone_De_Beauvoir That is true. Here’s my question. Is it a kind of contradiction for a vegetarian to be a vegetarian because they don’t like animals being killed, even though the consequence of vegetarianism is that all those animals will be killed anyway? The ends justify the means? Or is this some kind of ecological management designed to get the world back to some imaginary ideal state?

@wundayatta Cows are forceably impregnated on commercial farms by means of artificial insemination. They are basically raped in my opinion. It maintains the milk supply on dairy farms, the male calfs are sold for slaughter typically as veal. Cows would not be pregnant and producing milk as they do if not for man intervening. I don’t know if everything was left to nature how different the numbers would be, because if we left the males on the farm I guess they would be around to get the girls pregnant.

@JLeslie Wow. That’s a new viewpoint for me! I’ve worked on a dairy farm, so I’ve been around when a cow is being inseminated, and I’ve carried calves into the barn out of the pasture. I’ve trained male calves to drink from a bucket and seen them sent off to slaughter for veal.

Rape? That implies that these animals have rights. I don’t think they do. I think they are ours to do what we will with. If that’s rape, then slaughtering them is murder. Do you believe that? Do you drink milk? Eat beef?

I don’t think this kind of inflammatory language is justified. I don’t really understand where it comes from. It feels like an anthropomorphization of work animals. It feels like people… well, people having nonsensical feelings. Feelings are feelings, I know, but these don’t make sense to me.

Usually people support the notion of rights because they want the same rights themselves. The feel that if they don’t guarantee the right for others, then it is in danger for them. But this does not matter with respect to animals. We are never going to say that because it is ok to kill animals it is ok to kill humans. We won’t say that because it is ok to “rape” cows, it is ok to rape women. What does guaranteeing rights to animals get us?

It seems to me that one thing that it gets us is the opposite of what the people who want animal rights want. That is, giving cows rights will decimate the cattle population. Cattle only exist in large numbers because we devote so much to caring for them. If we no longer got any benefit for them, they’d be kicked off the farms and either killed or left to fend for themselves. There would be way too many to “rescue.” Even with all the rescue shelters, how many dogs and cats are “destroyed?”

So I don’t get the logic of animal rights. And if animals don’t have rights, they can’t be raped or murdered. We do say that animals in our care can not be maltreated, but that makes sense because it benefits us. I don’t see how going any further would be a benefit. Perhaps it has an emotional benefit for some. But I doubt if it has an emotional benefit for more than a small portion of humanity.

Maybe you think I’m crazy for this, but I have both loved a steer and a heifer and sent them off for slaughter. I spent a year with them. I built a small two-cow barn. I hung out with them in the winter, sitting on a hay bale, smelling their hay-sweet breath that was steaming into the air. I may have even lain against them. It was comforting and meditative and wonderful

I played with them in the fields. I tried to ride them. I laughed when my cat imitated the dog and tried to chase them. Imagine a little cat trying to nip a giant cow’s hoof to make him move!

And then I sent them off to the slaughterhouse without an ounce of guilt.

I imagine that makes me some kind of heartless jerk to people who believe in animal rights. My sister didn’t understand how the rest of my family could eat that meat, and so she never touched a bite. She couldn’t eat anything she knew.

So I don’t understand the thinking behind animal rights. I guess I’ll ask a question.

@wundayatta I don’t see how it’s a contradiction. We can just stop making new animals for our sake only. And how is it less of a contradiction to let things go on as they are?

Am thoroughly amused

@Simone_De_Beauvoir As they are, we have no illusions that we treat animals as anything other than for our own purposes. We do not pretend they have rights.

If you say we should treat animals differently, then how do you want them to be treated? What is your goal? Do you want as many of them to live as possible? Do you want them to simply stopped being used by humans, period? What do you want. Do you care about their lives or only about how they are used? Does it matter than millions of animals will die if we stop using them for meat?

@wundayatta I know many people don’t feel animals should have rights. Many people don’t think other people should have rights. That is obvious.

I want animals to be treated with the understanding that we depend on them and they depend on us. My goal is not to treat this subject matter in a cursory manner – there are political, economic and environmental factors involved in meat and dairy production that span beyond animal rights and are crucial to understanding what’s happening – it would be great if more people were aware of these intersections. I think we have always had a tenuous relationship where we have used animals in place of humans for testing, for space travel, for make-up production, for sport, for fun, for sadism, whatever. I don’t imagine a world where we don’t interact with animals. But what a world that valued animals for what they’ve done for us look like?

You keep talking about this millions of animals that will die if we don’t use them for meat. How about tomorrow all the meat industry finish up their last batch and not create new animals – we don’t even know what natural numbers of certain animals would look like anymore. Perhaps we’d have fewer animals, we can kill them in a manner farmers used to kill them, with humility, with appreciation. I’ve read many accounts of how farmers relate to animals aside from the fact that I grew up on a farm (and yes, I slaughtered chickens) and I know their relationship differs from the kind you evoke with you ‘ate some beef, it was damn good’ kinds of words.

@wundayatta Well, I have admitted before that I find myself to be somewhat of a hypocrite when it comes to this issue. I feel badly for the animals if I think about. If I really think about it I should be a vegetarian probably, or at minimum make sure I eat animals that I feel had a relatively free life. Cows seem happy to lay around and graze, so I am not sure there is any great negative impact on them by keeping them fenced in. I have certainly seen in nature male animals chase after a female and seemingly have sex with her when she might not have been a very willing partcipant. Does this happen between to cows? I don’t know. From what I understand when a female cow is inseminated she is entered through her anus and vagina, something with entering her anus helps tip the uterus into a good position. Not sure if that is correct or just some stuff I read put out by extremist vegans, but I would think they are not lying. So, yeah, I put myself in that cows place, and to be entered without my permission is rape in a sense. I think animals and feeling and can feel violated.

It makes sense to me the cows need to stay pregnant to not have their milk dry up. I guess ifbthey are constantly being milked maybe they will continue to milk indefinitely without a pregnancy? Most women get very uncomfortable when their breasts are full, I assume the cows are not thrilled with it either.

Back to my hypocrisy, I do try to buy cage free eggs and chickens, and the milk I usually buy says the cows grow up happy :). I don’t eat veal, although I understand there are farmers who treat the baby calfs well, if I knew how to ensure it was a calf from one of those farms I might be willing to male my husband’s favorite Osso Bucco for him.

I think we should always remember an animal is a living thing that feels pain both physcially and mentally.