Mr EDible

In a time when we’re trying to be as healthy as we can why are people opposed to the human consumption of horsemeat?

This week a Perth butcher says he’s received death threats over his decision to sell horse meat.

Personally, I think anyone silly enough to threaten a professional knife wielder has a few issues anyway, but what’s the big deal with horse meat?

Don’t criticise the consumption of horsemeat if you’ve recently downed a chop, sausage, steak or drumstick! If the animal is slaughtered humanely and meets human grade regulations (for chemicals etc) then it really doesn’t matter if it’s got cloven hooves of not. Obviously for Jews regarding kosher food then cloven hooves does matter, but for the rest of us…

Let’s take a look at horse meat in history. For the past 17-thousand years horse was a favourite on the menu throughout Europe and certain parts of Asia. Wild horses were hunted like any other prey. The timeframe is explained around the development of tools and hunting techniques sophisticated enough to hunt a large, very fast animal like a horse.

The main reason other continents don’t have a similar cultural tolerance for horsemeat is simply because humans in those regions weren’t exposed to the early horses. They encountered horses thousands of years later once they had been domesticated and were just as commonly used as beasts of burden as they were beasts of buffet.

The change in Europe came with the early Christians. Oddly enough a papal degree in 732 banned the consumption of horsemeat as it had strong links with the pagan feasts in communities. These sentiments are largely responsible for the original mindset against horsemeat which carried into many western countries.

The thinking of horses as pets is fairly recent. As late as the 1930s horses were still very much regarded as purely livestock and there was little opposition to the idea of horse meat. But after World War II horses took on a far, more recreational image and from then on we’ve seen a growth in the “horses are pets” mentality.

Australia has a thriving horse meat export industry. Farming UK reports Australia exports about 24-thousand tonnes a year. That’s in a world horse meat market dealing with more than 720-thousand tonnes from almost 5-million horses annually.

As a food source I’m not convinced horses are a solid option from a grain/meat conversion point of view. They are not efficient converters of grains so the grains would be better off going into other meat animals like cows, sheep and goats.

But from nutritional stand they’re hard to beat.

A quick check on a variety of nutrition sites reveals 100g of horse compared to beef yields about 5g of fat (beef 20g), 3.8mg iron (beef 1.9mg), 21g protein (17g), 133 calories (254) and 53mg cholesterol (71mg).

There are a variety of discussions about where the horses for slaughter come from. Racing industry leftovers, culled feral horses, unwanted recreational horses (those “pets” we should hold sacred). The answer is likely all three. But does it matter?

You’ll never stop the thoroughbred industry operating the way it does, you’ll never stop the need to control feral horses, and you’ll never stop recreational horses sometimes ending up at the knackers.

Once they end up there, and they’re slaughtered humanely – why shouldn’t they be considered a reasonable protein source?

I’ve never eaten horse but I have eaten donkey (after a dare while shooting feral animals in the Kimberley) and while I wouldn’t recommend donkey, I’m not going to knock back a chance to try horse. I might like it!

And why wouldn’t I? I love horses! I have horses of my own, I always have. They have names and I love them and I’d never consider eating them.

But having poddy calves, pet lambs and a host of chooks with names hasn’t stopped me eating the ones I didn’t know personally.

The mark of an evolved society is not what it eats, but the manner in which that food is prepared. As long as we treat our food animals humanely throughout their lives and subsequent death, then eating them is not something to be ashamed of.