Published:
November 3, 2003
LOCAL
NEWS: Rockford Register Star
Support?
Yes, but we’ll pass on meal
—
Melissa Birks
Even Americans who support the right of
slaughterhouses to turn horses into meals say they’ve
never eaten the product — and never would.
Chalk it up to our culture, but not the culture of
millions of others around the world. According to the
Equine Protection Network, since 1980, more than 4 million
American horses have been sold for meat in France, Belgium
and Japan.
Terri Morrison, a Philadelphia-based “interculturalist,”
writes in Global Business Basics that, in the history of
the United States, Americans depended on horses to push
back the frontier.
The animal was too valuable to eat. Europe, on the
other hand, had an abundance of horses every time large
armies demobilized.
“If you look at China, the reason they eat bats or
scorpions or monkey brains is not because they decided
‘Gee, let’s go out and get some exotic game.’ They
have eaten it for thousands of years,” Morrison said in
a phone interview.
“If a culture reveres its ancestors, they know their
great-great-grandparents looked at any and all food
sources. These are a part of the cultural aspect that goes
back thousands of years.”
Opponents insist that they are not out to change
anyone’s culture.
“If the French and Belgians want to eat their horses,
go ahead. Don’t eat ours,” said Cathleen Doyle,
founder of HoofPAC, which organized a successful
California referendum to prohibit the slaughter or export
of horses for human consumption.
So what does horse meat taste like? Ask around and two
things become clear:
* One, you can get an answer but, if you’re talking
to an American, it’s always secondhand. “From what
I’ve read,” “From what I’ve heard,” “I was in
France, and they told me.”
* Two, horse meat tastes like beef, only sweeter.
That’s because horses’ athletic muscles store more
sugar than cows’ muscles, said Sheryl King, director of
Equine Studies at Southern Illinois University.
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