Killing Horses for Humans to Eat!

[EweSheep]

If you can remember the link I posted a few pages back on YouTube, with THAT one processing company, guessing Europe, maybe France, it was as humane it can be. When you "bolt", it is NORMAL for the animal to react, jerking and so forth. That means the bolt gun has stun the animal to its death, its quick. Surely they would not allow an inexperience "bolter" person to do the job, its not fair to the person nor the horse to suffer when you are trying to get a good aim so it would be quick and painless. It is like rabbits we butcher, a hammer to the head, slit their throats, it's done. They HAVE to slit the throats to bleed out, you sure don't want blood to collect there, making the meat have "off taste". In that YouTube, I've seen the whole thing and it is not any different than cattle. Yes, horses are a bit sensitive but I have not seen all of them going bonkers, they just don't know what it is at the end of the tunnel but they do sense something is up.

I would not eat my own horses but for others, I would. A horse with NO name, sight unseen, is the better one for me to eat. I don't know if I can just pick a horse out of the pasture and say OK, wrap him up.

I will check out those links to see if they can offer horsemeat for me to try. My Dad wants to try it too.

 

[checoukan]

I don't think that the animal know something is up going down the tunnel, I think they just want to get out of the tunnel. Also, I don't think they flinch from the bolt, most animals all shy from a loud close noise. Just go out by most horses and clap your hands, or slap the side of the barn, they jerk, and wern't even touched.

 

[knjinnm]

Hi all,
Not much activity lately so I want to add that we traveled in Europe including Italy and France in 2008 for six months and never found horse meat on a menu. We traveled again in 2010 to Austria, Hungry, Slovenia, Czech Republic and other East block countries and never saw horse meat on the menu.

The problem in the U.S. is everyone believes they can get a Doc-something-or-other out of their supposed paint quarter horse.
Thoroughbred horse farms must breed thousands of horses to get one Seabiscuit which leaves a lot of also rans or never rans up for auction or dog food processors.
We have a never ran named Obie Wan, a friend has a ten year runner named Daddy, wonderful horses but they need constant work and attention unlike a quarter horse which can be content to be tied up to the hitch-en post with its head down .... think-en ... don't ask me to do anything.

Bottom line, don't support horse racing or rodeos.

 

[Mattemma]

We have a race track coming locally in 2014.It is called a RACINO. Racing and gambling.

 

[zzGypsy]

Bottom line, don't support horse racing or rodeos.

... or if you do, be willing to accept all the things that go with it. including the disposition of hundreds of horses that don't make the grade.

one thing I've noticed over 40 years of watching this process is that the quality of the horses going to the kill buyer (for shipment to mexico) is a lot worse now than it was 30 years ago. that speaks to what's being bred - the cull end of the list is a lot poorer than it was, and that tells me that folks are breeding with far less interest in quality. that's a shame.

bought my first horse in 1970 from a lady who didn't want him to go to the kill buyer, he was an older ex-ranch horse who taught me to ride. I paid $125 for him, $25 less than the kill buyer would have given. a couple of months ago I saw horses his same size/weight going for less than $100 to the kill buyer locally. given inflation since 1970, had the horse kill-market held value, the kill buyer price for them should have been $880. before the US kill ban in 2005, they'd have brought $600 at the kill market, so pretty close to the inflation rate since 1970 (which would have been $750).

when a market so badly underperforms over time, there's something changing in the market.

here's the problem I see as to why the quality of what's being bred and going to slaughter is so poor...
the cost to slaughter is up because horses have to be hauled sometimes a thousand miles or more, and that's expensive.
that means the kill buyer can't pay as much to puchase the slaughter-bound horses.
so that drives the minimum sale price for auction horses down.
the lower auction price allows folks who couldn't buy an auction horse at $880 minmum to buy horses at $100.
and that means folks with $100 and no sense are buying and breeding horses.
at least when it cost effectively near $900 to buy a mare who was sent to auction, you had to think a bit harder. it wasn't nearly as easy to just get a waster capable of breeding and toss her in the back yard to eat weeds and have "cute" babies.

seriously some of the scrawny, ewe-necked, narrow-chested, post-legged, unhandled, unbroken, unproven 3-year old "studs" I see advertised on craigslist as "beautiful stallion, perfect as your herd sire" just make me want to cry.

and the way I see it, they're the inevitable and natural by-product of having banned horse slaughter in the US.
the law of unintended consequences strikes again.

sometimes 'nice' people with good intentions make me crazy.

anyway, all that to say I don't think it's the fault of the racing industry or the rodeo industry. 30 years ago we saw horses from both industries being bred in excess in an effort to produce champions, and the surplus going to slaughter... that's true. but the excess I'm seeing at auction now is *not* bred by either industry... because there's NO possibility there are champions coming from those lines.

 

[JohnPeel]

Horsemeat in Tesco burgers prompts apology in UK papers

Above Picture: Old Ned

Officials said the meat came from two processing plants in the Irish Republic and one in England
Tesco has placed full-page adverts in a number of national UK newspapers apologising for selling beefburgers that were found to contain horsemeat.

The supermarket giant said it and its supplier had let customers down and promised to find out "what happened".

On Tuesday, it emerged Irish food inspectors had found almost 30% horsemeat in one brand sold by Tesco.

Smaller amounts were also found in beefburgers sold by Iceland, Lidl and Aldi and Dunnes.

Officials said the contaminated products - on sale in the UK and the Irish Republic - posed no risk to human health and had been removed from shop shelves.

In its advertisement, which has the headline "We Apologise", Tesco said: "We and our supplier have let you down and we apologise.

“Start Quote: People in our country will have been very concerned to read this morning that when they thought they were buying beefburgers they were buying something that had horse meat in it” End Quote David Cameron Prime Minister

"So here's our promise. We will find out exactly what happened and, when we do, we'll come back and tell you.
"And we will work harder than ever with all our suppliers to make sure this never happens again."

Tesco confirmed the products affected were its Tesco Everyday Value 8 x Frozen Beef Burgers (397g), Tesco 4 x Frozen Beef Quarter Pounders (454g) and a branded product, Flamehouse Frozen Chargrilled Quarter Pounders.

It stressed it had "immediately withdrawn from sale all products from the supplier in question".

The company also said customers who had any of the contaminated items at home could return them to any Tesco store for a full refund.

The revelations come just one week after Tesco's chief executive Philip Clarke insisted the company was "back on form" in Britain as it reported its strongest growth in UK Christmas sales for three years.

However, news of the horsemeat contamination was followed by a drop in the company's shares on Wednesday - wiping hundreds of millions of pounds off its
market value.

Speaking in Parliament, Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the situation as "a completely unacceptable state of affairs" and called for an urgent investigation by Britain's Food Standards Agency (FSA).

"People in our country will have been very concerned to read this morning that when they thought they were buying beefburgers, they were buying something that had horsemeat in it," he said.

But for me, I don't really care. Cow, horse, pig, sheep, chicken, panda, it really makes no difference to me unless the animal is at risk of being wiped out. If it tastes like crap, then it probably is.

 

[duckluck]

I know this isn't about chickens, but we are animal people, not just chicken people. Has anyone else heard about this? The House and Senate just approved a bill legalizing the slaughter of horses for human consumption and OBAMA SIGNED IT IN TO LAW!! On November 18th.

Are they kidding? This is preposterous!

I hate to tell ya, but this has been going on forever...they only made slaughterhouses in the US illegal a few years ago but sounds like they are legal again. But horses are eaten by humans in many countries, including by some here in the US...they just slaughter them in their backyards now.

Horsemeat is eaten regularly in Japan and France, among other countries, but those are main places where the US used to export to when the slaughterhouses here were open. There was one here in DeKalb.

 

[duckluck]

Why??? Horse meat is delicious. I ate in Japan, not knowing at the time what it was, but it was very good.

Even though I have seen horses be slaughtered by the captive-bolt chamber, I would never eat it. I had to feed it to wild animals when I was a rehabber and it smelled *disgusting*. It was not spoiled, merely defrosted. Anything that smells bad like that isn't getting eaten by me.

 

[duckluck]

OK I've had it to along with puppy. Didn't know pony and puppy were really just that.

Horse meat was salty and the puppy was great. And yes when I found out I threw up all over the place and was sick for days. No from the taste but the idea.

I'd just like to know what it is that we're running out of to make them think we need to do this.

I'm with ya...there is an aversion in our society to eating our friends and I plan to stick with it. And no, I haven't tasted either and don't plan to. I'm a picky eater who likes to know exactly what they are eating and doesn't try new things very often...am very skeptical when people try to get me to try a new food.

 

[duckluck]

It is sad, but there is a glut of them for sale. I guess people can't afford to feed them. They were selling for $10 each at the auction last week:-(

Here in Will County, at least 10 horses were set loose by their former owners in the past year. Only one was reclaimed, so I have heard.