I put this in food and drink, rather than pets... The European horse/beef scandal keeps on spreading. There's a horrendously complex network of slaughterers, meat cutters, middlemen and agencies involved in putting meat on the table, as we here are discovering. A big surprise is that 15,000 TONS of American horseflesh is sold to Europe every year! Although horse is banned for human consumption in the US, they are sold to Mexico and Canada, who slaughter them and export the meat for the European human food chain. "... Jo Swabe, European Union director of HSI, said: Americans, rather like the British, do not regard horses as a source of meat and so these animals are treated by their owners with drugs that mean they cannot enter the human food chain. There is no reliable system in the US, or in Canada and Mexico , to verify just what medicines have been administered and yet these carcasses are being shipped to Europe. The only answer is for this trade to be stopped. Unlike Europe, where a horse must have a passport identifying its origin and listing medications it has had, there is no such US system. Instead, any American selling a horse to Mexico or Canada must declare it has received no substances making it unfit for use as food such as phenylbutazone or bute, a widely-used painkiller and a carcinogen in humans. Campaigners say this system is ripe for abuse.... " http://www.independent.co.uk/news/u...d-should-be-banned-say-activists-8498711.html
I do find this disturbing. It is high time that we prohibit the administering of medications that make horseflesh unfit for food. While we're at it, let's stop giving over thousands of acers of land to wild horses. Round them up and bring down the foreign trade deficit a little bit and let the land go back to supporting buffalo herds the way God intended. Maybe we can all get a chance to see bluebirds again.
Dat's why Granny don't eat Chinese food... Horsemeat scandal spreads to Asia Fri, Feb 22, 2013 - The fallout from Europes horsemeat scandal has spread far outside the continent, with an imported lasagna brand pulled from shelves in Hong Kong and a new row over the treatment of horses farmed in the Americas.
Other than potentially harmful chemicals being in it(which wouldn't be there if the horsemeat was declared to be for food up front), is there anything actually wrong with eating horsemeat? I gotta say, I've never had horse before, but if it's been in beef and people had no idea, it can't be that bad. That said, I do understand why people would be upset about eating something they thought was one thing but is actually something else, but I'm still curious why the backlash against horsemeat.
New horsemeat alert in Europe... New horse scare: 55,000 tons of meat recalled Europe-wide by Dutch authorities 10 Apr.`10 -- Dutch food safety authorities have ordered the Europe-wide withdrawal of 55,000 tons of beef from sale over concerns that it might contain horse.
There isn't jack wrong with horsemeat. In fact, I'd bet that a lot of Americans have eaten horse and not even known about it. They are considered livestock and until the ban they were slaughtered just as cattle. If the market was regulated like cattle, then there wouldn't be a problem with it. Of course other than the idea that some people would think it was wrong to eat Trigger.... LOL!
There's the nub of it, the yuck factor in eating Trigger. That and the fact that all kinds of drugs banned in the human food chain, are used in horses, so that when they do get in there by nefarious means, many toxic substances come with them.
Ever raised cattle? Chickens? Goats? Sheep? All of the named animals are treated with different kinds of drugs for different reasons and end up in the food chain for us right now... The key to it is making sure the industry is regulated so the unsafe drugs are at least reduced, because we all know they won't ever be completely stopped. Now as for the YUCK factor.... LOL I can't help with that one... I guess its kinda like eating chitterlings or mountain oysters.... You can do it, but the thought is just kinda tough to swallow.... I'm not saying I want to run out and order up a ton of horse meat to grill, but what I do think it would do is reduce the number of animals that are starved to death because deadbeat owners don't feed them. At least those animals would be put down and not made to suffer a slow painful death like they are currently being made endure. Our family has 9 horses and I couldn't imagine eating one of them, but if it came down to them starving, I'd rather they die a fast death than the slow nag of starvation like so many are doing right now due to these bans on slaughter.
I've never had horse, either, but I'd try it. The Apaches used to ride their horses into the ground and then butcher 'em up for food when they were on the move. Probably lean, tough, and chemical free. But I like horses. I wouldn't want to see them penned, fed hormones, packed into cattle trucks and butchered at a year or two.
I have no moral objection to eating horse meat as long as it's properly cooked like any other meat. I don't think it should be falsely advertised as something else like beef because people who don't want to eat horse shouldn't be deceived, but as regular meat like lamb I see no reason why it should be banned.
