Horse Slaughterhouse Approved by USDA to Produce Meat for Human Consumption

reply to post by Raist


Nine out of ten cannibal’s agree

"Japanese people taste the best - whites are too salty!" [bild]

www.geekologie.com...

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


*Sigh*

You brought up cannibalism as if it were illegal. I was simply pointing out it is not illegal. That does not mean it is moral though. But no where did I say I wanted to be a cannibal.

You are equating horses to people and they are not, they are animals. Animals and plants are meant to be eaten.

Raist

I told 3 people about this today. Not one of them can stand the thought of it and won't eat fast food again. Also will be bugging their stores about fillers in their meats.

Maybe it is the spoiled American but were not starving. If your starving its different. Animals such as horses (and others) have the ability to feel pleasure and pain. They can form attachments and are loyal. If done humanely - let live and die without suffering it might be ok - if necessary. Or if someone really likes horse than a humane way of going about this. The way most meats get to our tables include tremendous and prolonged suffering to these animals. Trauma from day 1 of their lives.

To those who think its ok could you also corral them into 110 degree trucks pulling their young from them while they scream in pain and resist, drive them to your destination and then drag them from the neck to wait in line while they wait their turn to be killed? Because that's what I'm hearing is ok. This isn't about eating a horse as much as it is how they are treated.

If I speak to any hunter I know they all agree - kill the animal quickly. If you look at Native American history they would certainly eat a horse if necessary to survive but they believed animals had spirits and had an appreciation for all they received. People today waste. So lets make fillers with horse meat so people have even more to throw away? This isn't necessary. There is plenty if people would stop wasting.

Originally posted by Char-Lee

Originally posted by SaturnFX
I won't eat what I consider pets or things that have of equal intelligence/self awareness (such as dolphins, Whales, Elephants and Apes) on principle...however, put starvation into the equasion and I will eat what I must.

Horses fall in both the pets and self awareness category.

Everything else is fair game.

Science leaders have reached a critical consensus: Humans are not the only conscious beings; other animals, specifically mammals and birds, are indeed conscious, too. - See more at:


www.earthintransition.org...

No doubt there are, but horses, dolphins, whales, and I believe magpies are so far the only ones that have demonstrated self awareness.
As far as theorizing about consciousness in other species...well, until there is a test, then it simply isn't valid..its just conjecture.

And although cats and dogs don't show that, well..they are my accepted list of pets...so, can't eat them unless starving.

it's not being done....end of story....actually take some time to check on the validity of this.

Originally posted by Dianec If you look at Native American history they would certainly eat a horse if necessary to survive but they believed animals had spirits and had an appreciation for all they received.

What utter and total BS. "Native Americans" were no more kind to animals than anyone else. Explain buffalo jumps to me. Were they just assisting the buffalo's spirits to freedom hundreds and thousands at a time?

I hate it when people glorify an imaginary past. Do some research!

reply to post by SaturnFX


For me, eating dog/cat is not about it being a pet. It is about them being carnivores. Unless we are dealing with ocean going animals, I just find eating predators repugnant.

I have tried a few predatory type animals before. I don't like them, typically. I also don't like anything from the swamp. So things like muskrat, or any other swamp food, is just out of my range. I have yet to taste a swamp creature that didn't taste like the term "swamp creature". Since I don't eat that stuff, it is a small club.

reply to post by ElectricUniverse

A horse is an animal. I would rather see a horse eaten and keep a human alive than to see both starve. What kind of messed up thinking causes you to compare this idea to saying we should eat inmates? Or that it is okay to abuse ones wife, husband, or children? Maybe you need to take a step back from this thread if you feel so strongly that you put words into another's post that are not there. Even the idea of such thoughts are not in my post.

A horse is an animal, it is not human. People have eaten horses throughout time, they have been work animals not pets. Many cultures eat dog, cat and even monkey. That is how they survive. Dogs and cats are a very abundant source of food if need be. Many keep rabbits as pets, yet far more use rabbits as food. Those who keep rabbits as pets would never think to eat rabbit. If they had the choice to eat it or starve though I would wager they would change their mind. If not they are foolish. A rabbit like a horse is an animal. Horses stay out in the rain and cold, they are preyed on by coyotes, wolves, bear, and puma. Horses are not people.

Cows are eaten daily by most and I would even assume by you. Yet new studies have shown that cows have best friends. They actually feel sad and stressed when they are separated from their friends.
www.dailymail.co.uk...

www.guardian.co.uk...

According to new research by scientists at Northampton University, cows have "best friends" and get stressed when separated.

That is cool news, but it will not keep me from eating a steak or burger if it is put in front of me. Does that make me heartless or a monster? To some it might and I would wager that to you it would also. But I do not care what anyone thinks of me as I eat to survive, not to please others. I eat what I wish and I eat a lot of meat and will continue to do so. Horses might be pets to some but I see them as an additional food source. They are a leaner meat than a few others (I only know this through reading about it). Animals are meant to be eaten.

I would also think that you would not want to eat a gazelle either, but lions eat them and I would as well. The same goes for zebra, giraffe, hippo, or what ever else when it comes to survival. I am not looking to kill endangered species just to eat them, but if it came down to my life or theirs, they would end up on my plate.

I have eaten quite a variety of meats, I am not going to turn down horses if offered up. There are plenty of horses in the world a few being eaten is not going to wipe them out.
Horses have been eaten for a very long time.

Humans have been hunting and eating wild horses since the end of the last ice age and, along with reindeer, the meat provided a vital source of protein. As early as 4000 BCE, however, fossil records indicate the beginning of equine domestication, which likely also marks the initial shift in the way that people thought about horses. One of the earliest public excoriations of horsemeat consumption came from the Vatican in 732, when Pope Gregory III issued a ban on the practice, hoping to distance the church from what it considered a pagan predilection. Even still, horsemeat remained a dietary staple in many parts of the world, especially Europe, with both France and Germany openly bucking the papal decree in the nineteenth century.

The church’s stance undoubtedly had a lasting impact on public perception, though, and likely accounts for at least some of the broad aversion in English-speaking countries like the US, England, Ireland, Australia, and some parts of Canada. Observant Jews are also unable to eat horsemeat because, as neither a ruminant nor a cloven-hoofed animal, it isn’t kosher. Psychologically, as horses assumed the familiar role of companions in battle and work, the idea of eating one must have become increasingly off-putting. And, although eaten by people of all classes throughout history, many cultures now associate horsemeat with penury—a last resort when beef and pork are unaffordable. The practice has never taken hold in America, but, up until 2007 when the nation’s last horse abattoir was shuttered in Illinois, thousands of horses were slaughtered and processed here annually for export.

mentalfloss.com...

en.wikipedia.org...

In 732 A.D., Pope Gregory III began a concerted effort to stop the ritual consumption of horse meat in pagan practice. In some countries, the effects of this prohibition by the Roman Catholic Church have lingered and horse meat prejudices have progressed from taboos, to avoidance, to abhorrence.

Raist

Well I travel fairly regularly to other countries some poor some not. I do not pick up on languages very fast and even then it isn’t like I know the cuts of meat. My last trip out of the country I found myself in a market looking at beef and none of it was labeled in English so I just picked what looked the leanest.

Hey it cooked up great it tasted great but I found out it was trigger. Oh well don’t knock it till you try it. It wasn’t the first time I had horse because I had horse sausage once before.

The only animal I couldn’t eat when I was in Asia was Monkey when they brought it out all cooked it looked to human for me and I lost my appetite although if I stayed in that village much longer I probably would have gotten over it. There wasn’t much in the way of other meat that they hunted but I am glad it didn’t come to that.

For the hypocrites that want to claim that because in other cultures, and other people do consume horse as meat, hence it is ok to do so, I guess those same people would love to eat human flesh as well since "it is meat after all" and there are not only people who have eaten human flesh before, but there are people who still do it, and there are even people who want to do it and want to make cannibalism legal...

Heck there are people even in developed countries who want "cannibalism to be legal"...

Cannibal Nation: 25% of Britons Want to Eat Human Flesh


Survey shows 24% of meat-eaters would be interested to find out what human flesh tastes like


By Hannah Osborne: Subscribe to Hannah's RSS feed | May 13, 2013 3:22 PM GMT

Britain is a nation of curious cannibals, with 24% of people saying they would be interested to find out what human meat tastes like.

A survey by the TV channel Eden to mark the launch of its Pop Science season found that 14% of people would also allow a doctor to take a flesh sample from their bodies so the aroma could be analysed and a 'human burger' created for them to sample.
...

www.ibtimes.co.uk...

The Cannibals of North Korea


By Max Fisher, Published: February 5, 2013 at 6:00 am


There were times and places in North Korea in the mid-1990s, as a great famine wiped out perhaps 10 percent of the population, that children feared to sleep in the open. Some of them had wandered in from the countryside to places like Chongjin, an industrial town on the coast, where they lived on streets and in railroad stations. It wasn’t unusual for people to disappear; they were dying by the thousands, maybe millions. But dark rumors were spreading, too horrifying to believe, too persistent to ignore.

“Don’t buy any meat if you don’t know where it comes from,” one Chongjin woman whispered to a friend, who later defected and recounted the conversation to the reporter Barbara Demick for her book, “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.” Fear of cannibalism, like the famine supposedly driving it, spread. People avoided the meat in streetside soup vendors and warned children not to be alone at night. At least one person in Chongjin was arrested and executed for eating human flesh.

The panic, Demick concludes, may have exceeded the actual threat. “It does not seem,” she writes, “that the practice was widespread.” But it does appear to have happened.

One defected military officer, who fled with his family into China, repeated the horror story that had long followed mass famines. “People are going insane with hunger. They even kill and eat their own infants. This kind of thing is happening in many places,” he said, according to the North Korea-focused postscript to Jasper Becker’s history of the famine that wracked China 30 years earlier, in which reports of cannibalism were widespread.
...

www.washingtonpost.com...


Not to mention that there are some cultures and people who still live in primitive conditions and do perform cannibalism...

Heck, meat is meat, is meat right?...

Seriously, the real hypocrites in the world astound me...

reply to post by Grimpachi


Yeah they are throwing a fit about horse meat but new studies show cows have best friends.

www.guardian.co.uk...

According to new research by scientists at Northampton University, cows have "best friends" and get stressed when separated.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

The research showed cows were very social animals which often formed close bonds with friends in their herd.

'When heifers have their preferred partner with them, their stress levels in terms of their heart rates are reduced compared with if they were with a random individual,' Ms McLennan said.

We better ignore this though because it does not fit in with horses being pets and cows being food. I guess if cows were cuter and did not slobber all the time people would see them as pets as well.

Funny thing is you can see in my last post that it was the church that started to make the eating of horse meat taboo.

In 732 A.D., Pope Gregory III began a concerted effort to stop the ritual consumption of horse meat in pagan practice. In some countries, the effects of this prohibition by the Roman Catholic Church have lingered and horse meat prejudices have progressed from taboos, to avoidance, to abhorrence.[24] In other parts of the world, horse meat has the stigma of being something poor people eat and is seen as a cheap substitute for other meats, such as pork and beef.

en.wikipedia.org...

Humans have been hunting and eating wild horses since the end of the last ice age and, along with reindeer, the meat provided a vital source of protein. As early as 4000 BCE, however, fossil records indicate the beginning of equine domestication, which likely also marks the initial shift in the way that people thought about horses. One of the earliest public excoriations of horsemeat consumption came from the Vatican in 732, when Pope Gregory III issued a ban on the practice, hoping to distance the church from what it considered a pagan predilection. Even still, horsemeat remained a dietary staple in many parts of the world, especially Europe, with both France and Germany openly bucking the papal decree in the nineteenth century.

mentalfloss.com...

Because we love our beasts of burden. As with many food taboos, there’s no settled explanation for why most Americans are perfectly willing to eat cows, pigs, and chickens but turn their noses up at horse. Horse-eating, or hippophagy, became popular in Europe in the 19th century, when famines caused several governments to license horse butcheries. Today, horse meat is most widely available in France, Belgium, and Sweden, where it outsells mutton and lamb combined. While Americans have occasionally consumed their equine friends during times of scarcity, the practice just didn’t catch on. It may be that so many Americans forged intimate relationships with horses during our founding and expansion that eating the creature seemed morally wrong by the time of the nation’s major food shortages of the 20th century.

www.slate.com...


If horse meat shows up on my plate it is going to get eaten.

Raist

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


You know Raist already told you that cannibalism IS legal. Murder is NOT but cannibalism IS.


Do you not even read the replies made to you?

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


Why do you keep bringing up cannibalism? This is about horse meat. Horses are not humans. This is not about people eating people. This is about people eating horses. If this topic is that tragic to you that you cannot separate the two ideas (cannibalism and eating horse) maybe you need to take a step back. Horses live in a field, they work on farms and have throughout history been used as food. Horses are not humans (I feel a need to keep clarifying this with you) they are live stock. Live stock is meant to be eaten.

If you do not want to eat it fine, great, fantastic for you. However, just because it does not suit your taste does not mean you should have it be illegal so that others cannot eat it. It is stupid for eating anything that is not endangered to be illegal. Again though this is not about cannibalism, please drop it, the argument is nothing but a fallacy. You are trying to compare apples to potatoes. Eating horse is not the same as eating humans. The closest thing to that would be eating monkey and even then it is not the same.

Raist

Originally posted by Raist

A horse is an animal. I would rather see a horse eaten and keep a human alive than to see both starve. What kind of messed up thinking causes you to compare this idea to saying we should eat inmates? Or that it is okay to abuse ones wife, husband, or children? Maybe you need to take a step back from this thread if you feel so strongly that you put words into another's post that are not there. Even the idea of such thoughts are not in my post.
...

Learn to understand what people are saying/typing... YOU were the one making excuses that, and I quote:

Originally posted by Raist

There is no reason horses should not be raised for food. Throughout history horses have been nothing more than a work animal used to keep people alive either in battle or for farming. In the times of the great depression and even in other events it was horse meat that helped some to survive. I see no reason any animal cannot be used for food so long as it is not treated with cruelty.
...

Hence why I made a similar counter-argument using YOUR arguments. Just because horses have been eaten in the past by some people, and they have been abused doesn't mean it is ok to raise them as a food source, not to mention that at this pace they will be an endangered species, if they are not already which imo they are.

As it is the BLM doesn't really know how many wild horses there are, and there are many that were/are in captivity that are unaccounted for and more probably have already been through slaughterhouses and were consumed.

U.S. Wild Horses: Too Many Survivors on Too Little Land?


By Janet Ginsburg
for National Geographic Today


October 26, 2001

In 1971 Congress passed the Wild and Free-Roaming Horse and Burro Act, designed to preserve a living symbol of America's frontier past. Thirty years later, there are fewer wild horses than ever.

One hundred years ago an estimated two million mustangs roamed the Western range. But today there are fewer than 50,000, according to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). And the government has plans to reduce the herds even further—to just 27,000 by 2005.
...

news.nationalgeographic.com...

And that article is from 2001.

Originally posted by Montana

Originally posted by Dianec If you look at Native American history they would certainly eat a horse if necessary to survive but they believed animals had spirits and had an appreciation for all they received.

What utter and total BS. "Native Americans" were no more kind to animals than anyone else. Explain buffalo jumps to me. Were they just assisting the buffalo's spirits to freedom hundreds and thousands at a time?

I hate it when people glorify an imaginary past. Do some research!

That isn't suffering in my opinion. That's killing to feed their people and doing it both in the most efficiemt way possible. Anything may suffer when it dies! Do you have any idea of the comparison in here. Why don't you do some research on the other end of things in here.

reply to post by Raist


You know I read a while back (forget where) that they are having a problem with overpopulation of wild horses in the US to the extent of having to cull some of them partially because they are ruining the lands. Considering they are not natural to the America's well neither are Cows and they do not really have any natural predators.

On top of that many horse owners can’t afford them anymore some are releasing them to the wild others are putting them down on their own while others put them on box cars out of the country to be slaughtered for food. This entire debate is idiotic IMHO. If people don't want to eat horse then they shouldn't but the argument against it for others doesn’t hold water.

Keeping horse of the menu in the US isn’t going to save triggers life it will just make its death meaningless.

reply to post by Grimpachi


Oh no cannibalism is exactly the same as eating horse. It makes perfect sense now.

I can totally see why the topic of cannibalism was brought up in a thread about eating horse since horses and people are exactly the same thing.

Raist

Originally posted by Metallicus
That's disgusting. They can count me out of eating horse meat.

I can understand if they put it in something like Taco Bell or similar 'food'.

People that frequent Taco Bell already don't care about what they eat.

A lot of the world would disagree with you. There are many places where eating horse meat is fairly common ( And no not just poor countries ). It's really no worse for you than meat from a cow or meat from a pig or meat from a chicken etc....

Have I eaten horse? No. Would I? Yeah probably. I hear it tastes like beef.

reply to post by ElectricUniverse

not to mention that at this pace they will be an endangered species, if they are not already which imo they are.

In other words please check my facts as in, I am probably full of it.

Horse population estimated at 58 million

U S has 9.5 million horses, most in the world


Don’t worry they are nowhere near endangered yet.

reply to post by ElectricUniverse


I was pointing out facts. You are pointing out fallacies. Fact horses have been eaten and still are eaten as a food source. Fallacy (your words pretty much in your post) if it is okay to raise and eat horses it is okay to abuse people and eat them.

I understand you sad argument just fine. It does not fit well and shows that you are so caught up in emotion over a horse that you fail to see food and a work animal. You are also failing to see that horses are not humans.

And as for your wild horses thing, you do realize those horses would not be there to begin with if not for the intervention of man in releasing them into the wild in the past right? After all horses were not seen in the U.S. until the Spaniards brought them here. Of course there were some during the last ice age but they died out and many during that time were killed and eaten for food as well.

Not only that but they are not talking about eating the wild horses. They are talking about farming horses just as they do cattle, pigs, chickens, and all other mass sources of meat.

What say you though about cows having best friends? You failed to address that. Do you eat beef? You claim to eat meat, yet you confuse horses and humans. I understand both start with the letter H but after that they are not the same aside from being mammals.

Raist