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Eating horsemeat in France

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Re: Eating horsemeat in France

#161

Post by nathanvanfleet »

When I lived in Montreal I was surprised to find horse meat in a handful of regular supermarkets. It was cheaper than beef and it was pretty lean, 20 year-old student me appreciated both of those things. I found it pretty gamey and more flavorful than beef.

I did a bit of research and found out that Montreal had some of the largest horse slaughterhouses in the world. Apparently there are plenty of places in the world like Texas or Saudi Arabia with a lot of horses, and laws against slaughtering them for meat.

However if you're breeding a lot of horses you're going to end up with non-performing animals or too many horses for the space you have. So what can they do? They ship the live (healthy and not sick) animals to Montreal. They're slaughtered there and then shipped to places where they eat said meat.

Unfortunately they wouldn't let me get a tour, which was probably for the better anyway.

Re: Eating horsemeat in France

#162

Post by Fargoan »

nathanvanfleet wrote: post #161

When I lived in Montreal I was surprised to find horse meat in a handful of regular supermarkets. It was cheaper than beef and it was pretty lean, 20 year-old student me appreciated both of those things. I found it pretty gamey and more flavorful than beef. I did a bit of research and found out that Montreal had some of the largest horse slaughterhouses in the world. Apparently there are plenty of places in the world…

Or stop breeding them?

Re: Eating horsemeat in France

#163

Post by aliswe »

It is said (we learnt in school) that in sweden, to increase the spread of Christianity, the clerics made horsemeat religiously prohibited. If true, I think this contributed to why eating horse is essentially unthinkable in Sweden...

Re: Eating horsemeat in France

#164

Post by jillesvangurp »

Like most farm animals, horses don't normally die of old age and are instead either slaughtered or put to sleep by a veterinarian. If you think about it, cremating or burying a big animal like that is costly. So, a lot of horses end up being processed in a meat factory instead. The resulting meat is used for all sorts of things all over the world.

Horse slaughter is actually banned in the US. However, a lot of horses there are simply exported across the border to Canada or Mexico where they are slaughtered anyway. Why pay to have the animal disposed off when you can get some money for the meat?

Re: Eating horsemeat in France

#165

Post by riedel »

bipson wrote: post #10

Eating horse meat was very common in central Europe before the big wars. In WWI and WWII even more so, horses were declared essential for the war in axis countries, and eating them became illegal. In Italy horse meat picked right up again after WWII, but in Austria and Germany people forgot about the reasons it seems and it stayed unacceptable/frowned upon. You can find (excellent) horse meat products in western Aust…

In Cologne the classical Sauerbraten ( the most famous meat dish in the region) is from horse meat. I live in a house in Karlsruhe and the last business on the ground floor was a horse butcher. Germany, however, has become the land of mass produced meat, which can be done with pigs much easier. Horse meat is an expensive niche product.

Re: Eating horsemeat in France

#166

Post by myko »

systemvoltage wrote: post #152
RajuVarghese wrote: post #85

It is quite common here in Switzerland. Cafeterias serve it as well as regular restaurants but, admittedly, it is not as common as beef, pork, chicken or lamb. Surprisingly, it is illegal in Texas and other parts of the US though it may not be enforced. Texas even bans transportation of horse meat through the state.

> Surprisingly, it is illegal in Texas Why is it suprising? Horses are an integral part of history and culture of Texas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cowboy

So are longhorns :)

Re: Eating horsemeat in France

#167

Post by jameshart »

nwallin wrote: post #160
jameshart wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

‘Family’ doesn’t really have a defined meaning in modern taxonomy. Horses and cows are part of the same clade, ‘ungulata’ - hooved mammals. It’s not a Linnaean taxonomic ally ‘ranked’ clade though, like an ‘order’ or a ‘genus’ - but those terms aren’t really that formally valid, so using ‘family’ informally to mean ‘clade with some reasonable level of shared characteristics’ seems fair. But to also be fair, if you wa…

You can just look this stuff up on wikipedia... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_(biology) "Family (Latin: familia, plural familiae) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between order and genus." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equidae "Equidae (sometimes known as the horse family) is the taxonomic family of horses and related animals, including the extant ho…

My point is that Linnaeus's 'family' is not rigorously defined and generally not a very precise term anyway. If you're not sure what level of clade a pair of related creatures share, referring to them as being 'in the same family', informally, is fine.

And Ungulata is a clade. "Ungulates (/ˈʌŋɡjəleɪts, -ləts/ UNG-gyə-layts, - ləts) are members of the diverse clade Ungulata which primarily consists of large mammals with hooves."

As a clade, it includes several clades that are historically classified as 'orders' and several that are 'families'. It would be inaccurate to say 'horses and cows are members of the same Linnaean order'; but equally, in Linnaean terms, it would be insufficiently precise to say they share the same Linnaean 'grandorder', because that's also true of, say, a grizzly bear, or a badger.

Basically, if you're going to be taxonomically pedantic, I think it's better to be pedantic about the Actual taxonomy (i.e. the real common ancestry of an organism) than it is to be pedantic about the metataxonomy (i.e., the classification of clades as 'order' or 'family' or 'genus')

Re: Eating horsemeat in France

#169

Post by nwallin »

prawn wrote: post #56
xattt wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also get this reaction if you declare having eaten what I would call secondary meats (rabbit, duck, lamb).

You can get lion meat in the USA if you want to shock people: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/03/25/175296454/wh... Lamb and duck in particular are very common here in Australia. Personally, we seem to eat them more often than chicken.

The conservation status of lion is threatened. I feel the same way about eating lion that I do about southern bluefin tuna; it's not sustainable, don't do it.

I'd eat mountain lion or dog, but not lion or grey wolf.

nb: wild carnivores are almost always infected with parasites like trichinosis. If you do eat them, cook it well done.

Re: Eating horsemeat in France

#170

Post by xdennis »

RajuVarghese wrote: post #85

It is quite common here in Switzerland. Cafeterias serve it as well as regular restaurants but, admittedly, it is not as common as beef, pork, chicken or lamb. Surprisingly, it is illegal in Texas and other parts of the US though it may not be enforced. Texas even bans transportation of horse meat through the state.

> Texas even bans transportation of horse meat through the state.

Horse meat is banned in the whole US in the most American way possible: by the roundabout way of the government not providing horse meat inspectors.

Technically, you can eat meat in some places if you prepare it yourself, but since there are no inspectors there would be no way to sell it.

In the same way, it's not federally illegal to drink before 21, but congress will cut highway funds to any state which allows 20 year olds to drink.

BTW, I read in a book about The Godfather that Coppola remarked how ridiculous it is that people were upset that he used a real horse head and blood in the movie, but not with the fact that it came from a slaughterhouse which would have used it to make dog food.

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