Horse meat on Canadian cooking show raises eyebrows

So? Are horses somehow more special than cows? Why not complain about the seal flippers the chef from Newfoundland used on an episode?

My mother, who came from Holland, used to complain that horse meat was so hard to get hold off here in this area. She especialy liked smoked horse meat on a sandwhich. So we had it only a couple of times a year at best. Tasts just fine. I must say that I do not understand the aversion most seem to have towards it. It has rubbed off on my kids too, they would not eat it if they knew that it was horse meat. But if you tell them it is sliced smoked beef it is just fine. A mind issue.

Mind you, as a farmer, I would not likey raise horses just for the meat. I have been told that their feed conversion is not all that good. But I can see that as a result of the popularity of horses, it might be a good by product.

Quote:

Well, PETA goes after everything else...

Everything else? Yeah, that's so huge and vague an indictment it must be true, so your premise logically is correct.

There was something on this this morning on Q.

The only reasonable argument I heard against horse slaughter was an allegation that some of the meat is from racing animals and others which have been pumped with hormones - in short, that it is unfit and dangerous to eat. 

As for the other accusations of cruelty in slaughtering well, how is that problem, or the solution any different than for any other animal. 

My inclination is that the taboo comes down to the pet thing. I have eaten horse twice - once overseas, and once in Manitoba, and I thought it was just fine. Didn't get chased by a vengeful pooka in my dreams or anything

For those who are partial to meat, I recommend Felicity Dunlop's great book on Szechan cuisine - "Land of Plenty" for a bit of a crash course in the range of what is considered acceptable meat consumption. There is a chapter devoted specifically to the topic.

Actually if I had a chance to try dog I would, since i have heard very good things about it - though I am sure it all depends on the dog. 

Apparently when the Lewis and Clark expedition came out of the Bitterroot Mountains half-dead the people they encountered took them in and nursed them back to health with lots of salmon. The Americans got so tired of it eventually they started trading anything they could for dog so they could get some red meat. 

I am not a big fan of kidney, and I have even managed to eat durian. but the only food I have ever declined to try is smoked udder.

Boom Boom: is that mention of being able to get horse meat on supermarket shelves a quote? I remember buying it in Montreal, but had to go to a speciality butcher shop way east on Mont Royal. Don't remember ever seeing it on the shelves in Steinberg's or Provigo.

Timebandit wrote:

Actually if I had a chance to try dog I would, since i

ETA:  What I can't find at a reasonable price is rabbit.  My favourite butcher shop carries it, but very expensive.  And I know the wretched things aren't that expensive to raise.

Well there's your answer right there. I couldn't do it because the kids wouldn't let me get away with it. Speaking of which, a friend of mine was traumatized as a kid because her dad used to keep his fish in the bathtub to get the muddy taste out of them. Seeing her new pet on the supper table every Friday was too much for her.

And real snake (rattlesnake) is actually quite good. Not like some reptiles like alligator, which frankly, reminded me of the pissy taste of kidney, only sweeter.

And speaking of muskrats, rabbits and other rodents, someone brought a beaver dressed and roasted like a chicken to a treeplanting meeting of ours some years ago. It was wonderful.

Perhaps if Canadians were as outraged by the slaughter of Afghans or Libyans as they are of horses, we might have an effective anti-war movement.

I don't really have a horse in any discussion about regional or international culinary tastes, except to say that we're quite often carried away with our North American and European colonial centric view of what constitutes a decent eating experience.  A few weeks ago on vacation I enjoyed the most delicious moose sausages I've had in awhile.  All of the widely accepted uses of beef for example, within the various dishes served up and discussed as part of our accepted conversations, such as steak tar tar, huge dripping BBQ blackened rare slabs of it, liver, kidney pie, etc...might be just as unappealing in another situation where it may potentially be acceptable to as many or possibly more people engaged in a conversation involving poodles and noodles, german sheppard pie, or schnauzer schnitzel.  Eating meat of any kind leaves little room to disparage regional preferences here and there.

@SJ

Yeah, I think I missed the disparaging comment, whatever it was. The smoked udder I turned down was about as eurocentric as it gets - in Basel, Switzerland. Or perhaps I can offer some lutefisk, or a bit of haggis with extra lung? Blood pudding. or brain sausage?

But I do think the people who would be most disgusted at our north american diet are the North Americans themselves if they had a good whiff of where hot dogs come from, or realized that those plastic wrapped chickens went through a bath of shit soup before they wound up on their styrofoam trays.

And Timebandit, I think my kitchen would feel empty if I didn;t have at least a bit of moose or deer in the freezer. As a matter of fact, I just got a sour cabbage today, and I think moose holopci is on the menu.

6079_Smith_W wrote:

Yeah, I think I missed the disparaging comment, whatever it was.

I think you'd have to look at the links provided, and why such a story is newsworthy.

[i]Cheval[/i] is delicious.  A mouthful of horse is like two mouthfuls of beef.

But I'm sure both horse and beef lack the, well, magic of [url=http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/wacky-edibles/e5a7/]Unicorn[/url]

Camptown race track two miles long - doo-dah, doo-dah...Camptown race track two miles long - oh doo-dah-day!!

@ iceman

I realize there is a question of good butchers and bad butchers, but I think systems based on cruelty to animals to maximize profit  - like some factory farming - are worth being concerned about. It is a problem not just because of the treatment of animals, but also because of the damage it does to the environment, and to more sustainable agriculture. 

One might not be able to tell the difference in the meat, but the ethical concerns remain, and there may be physical differences - chemical and infectious - which one cannot see (although I can certainly smell the difference, and see the difference between a chicken carcass which is free range, and one which has spent its life in cramped quarters). 

I think taking an animal in the wild does generally cause less suffering than going through a slaughterhouse, though not all hunting is respectful either.

That said, I do take your point that much of the reaction to this is based on culture, and being disconnected from where our food comes from. 

And I agree with you about moose nose. It was one of the richest and most memorable bowls of soup I have ever had.

Yeah sorry. Not into doling out panic, pain and suffering just to tempt my tastebuds with exotic new experiences. 

Sucks to all those that demean another's dietary choices from a position of judgement. Sucks to them and their high horse.

When I was a kiddo a friend and I had the opportunity to eat some water snake - it was greasy. Crayfish cook-offs were a fun distraction for a few summers. Mind you, I'll save my tales of cannibalism in the quirkiest avantgard gatropubs for another thread.

I checked PETA's site; there's no sign of them galloping to the rescue yet.

This guy, oddly enough, hasn't seemed to notice either.

What is really being debated here is whether a person's moral view point can tell someone

 else what they can or cannot eat, how they raise it, how they prepare it and how they eat it.

Boom Boom wrote

"What cannot be argued, however, is that horses are routinely given drugs throughout their

lives that leave toxic residues, potentially carcinogenic to humans, in their meat", adds Grant.

"There is a clear food safety issue here."

This is true about almost everything in our food chain, even organically grown food has traces of

carcinogens in them. In the north the levels of mercury in wild game is rising.

The only way to insure that you don't ingets these is to stop eating.

Not a really viable option.

Cruelty toward slaughtered horses bad; cruelty toward slaughtered pigs, chickens, calves, steers, etc. not so bad.

Some meat is more equal than others.

And the fact is, horses don't always get the best treatment when they are being used for recreation and entertainment. Perhaps the people concerned about using them for food are also outraged by the treatment and rate of injury of horses at stampedes and races. 

But I have heard - most recently last summer around the Calgary Stampede - and respect the goals of that lobby. THis seems to be something different and unrelated. 

Using horses for our entertainment isn't an innocent pleasure either, and can often lead to them dying in a great deal more pain than slaughterhouses mete out.

And really, there are virtually no wild horses. THey are all, like dogs, corn and certain other domesticated species, bound up in human society and subject to how we treat them

And when they are done with them, guess where they go - the knackers. THe only difference is that they wind up in a glue bottle and a dog food can rather than on the plate.

...oh, and in a bag of blood and bone meal. Surprise! You get to eat the horse anyway, only it has been recycled as a cabbage!