You won't find a horse tenderloin or tartare on the regular menu in any U. Horse steak or ground horse patties cannot be found next to the beef and pork in your grocer's meat section. Why is horse meat not for sale in the United States? After all, it's not illegal to eat via The Takeout. If you want to slaughter a horse, turn it into steaks, sashimi, or sausage, and serve it to friends and family, that's your business. Here's the problem: Any meat sold in the United States must be inspected via USDA , and the federal government has zero budget for inspections of horse carcasses.
The issue comes up for debate every once in a while, but the inspection ban remains in place for via the Humane Society. Whether or not the legal barrier to mass production of horse meat ever gets lifted, the psychological barrier to eating our friend, Flicka , seems like it won't budge. In contrast, there has been a constant struggle by animal rights activists to ban the export of horses that might be intended for slaughter. Still, given the complexity of the case and potential economic losses, no such law has yet been announced.
Regardless of whether or not horse slaughter ever becomes legal in the US, you are legally free to slaughter and consume horse meat for personal use. So, what led the US population to build such sentiments? The primary reason horse meat is taboo is because horses are considered valuable pets and culturally respected animals. Besides, people fear horse meat might be infected with harmful drugs. Some Christian schools of thought also discourage eating horses.
Horses are part of our heritage in the US, and we owe a lot to them. They have been used for expanding the West, working farms, entertainment, and companionship throughout history. The bond between man and horse makes it difficult to slaughter it for food. Horses are considered as close friends with their owners as dogs can be-you may be able to give up your best friend to a good home but never sell him or her to be turned into a hamburger.
This relationship is what makes Americans so passionate about not eating horses. In the US, horses have been a part of our daily lives for over two centuries and are the foundation of Western riding.
They are regarded as friendly companions and treated to high ethical standards. In pop culture, horses contribute to entertainment themes, fiction, and education. Just like how eating a dog or cat would feel, eating horses is seen as grossly inappropriate by most people.
Many drugs are administered over the lifetime of a horse that you cannot legally give to animals raised for human consumption. Horses receive dewormer medication, antibiotics, and diuretics, making their meat dangerous for humans to eat. Ex-racehorses likely have the most unsafe drugs in their system, but other horses also regularly take harmful drugs to increase performance for sports competitions or working purposes.
Consequently, there are also general concerns regarding which farm or country the horse meat comes from, how it was produced, how owners treated their horse, and whether or not the meat has harmful chemicals in it. These drugs can be unsafe and even fatal if consumed by humans. Horses are some of the most incredibly symbolized animals in history and culture. They also occupy a unique position in most religions and spirituality. Furthermore, in Christianity and many other religions, eating horses is considered sacrilegious.
The belief caught on and still affects the views of many people today. To give an example of the taboo against eating horse meat, overpopulation is the greatest threat to wild horses.
The containment and management measures are often inhumane and brutal to the horses. Gradually, the taboo fell. Horses were killed in specialist abattoirs, and their meat was sold in separate butcher shops, where it remained marginalized.
Britain alone rejected hippophagy, perhaps because it could source adequate red meat from its empire. America also needed no horse meat. For one part, the Pilgrims had brought the European prohibition on eating horse flesh, inherited from the pre-Christian tradition. But for another, by the s the New World was a place of carnivorous abundance. Even the Civil War caused beef prices to fall, thanks to a wartime surplus and new access to Western cattle ranges. Innovations in meat production, from transport by rail to packing plants and refrigeration, further increased the sense of plenty.
Periodic rises in the price of beef were never enough to put horse on the American plate. Besides, horse meat was considered un-American. Nineteenth-century newspapers abound with ghoulish accounts of the rise of hippophagy in the Old World. In these narratives, horse meat is the food of poverty, war, social breakdown, and revolution—everything new migrants had left behind. Nihilists share horse carcasses in Russia ; wretched Frenchmen gnaw on cab horses in besieged Paris ; poor Berliners slurp on horse soup.
But in the s, a new American horse meat industry arose, if awkwardly. With the appearance of the electric street car and the battery-powered automobile, the era of the horse as a transportation technology was ending. When French and German consuls visited a Chicago abattoir suspected of selling diseased horse to Europe, opponents tried to smear the U. Agriculture secretary, who had previously intervened. By , the fledgling industry was faltering: Belgium barred U. In , horse meat was dragged into one of the highest-profile food scandals of the century: the notorious Beef Court investigating how American soldiers fighting in the Spanish-American War ended up poisoned by their own corned meat.
Many speculated wrongly that the contaminated beef was in fact horse meat. The new regulations put in place in the Pure Food Act could not reverse this overnight. When beef prices rose as canners shipped it abroad during World War I, Americans finally discovered horse steak.
By , Congress was persuaded to authorize the Department of Agriculture to provide official inspections and stamps for American horse meat, although as soon as beef returned after the war, most citizens abandoned chevaline.
The end of the war meant another drop in demand for range-bred horses no longer needed on the Western Front. A dealer, Philip Chappel, found a new use for them: Ken-L-Ration , the first commercial canned dog food. His success attracted perhaps the first direct action in the name of animal liberation: A miner named Frank Litts twice attempted to dynamite his Rockford, Illinois packing plant.
During World War II food shortages, horse meat once again found its way to American tables, but the post-war backlash was rapid.
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