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All in Favor, Say "Neigh" There is strange, and then there is the unexpected. Somewhere in between falls a recent article I found in the New York Times regarding an upcoming referendum in California regarding the slaughter of horses for sale as food abroad. That's right, food. I remember when I was growing up, my father used to joke about a place called Sal's Stand behind his high school. It seems that Sal had been found guilty of using horseflesh in his hamburgers and had actually been shut down for a while. Being a horse-loving child, I found this incredible. I was even more shocked when I heard kids my own age saying things like, "Saddle me up a burger, Sal." So this article in the Times awakened an old interest, and I went searching for information. First, I tried a basic search using a catchy slogan: "Save the Horses." Whoa Nellie, literally. Apparently, in 1997, there was quite a bit going down in the horse meat business, and a lot of articles were written. One article from the Minnesota Daily Online, 6 January 1997, reported on a federal program run by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that was intended to round up wild horses on public land and offer them for adoption. The article claimed the BLM was actually selling the horses to parties who would then resell them to slaughterhouses. This program ended up using public money to subsidize middlemen, who would then clear around $500 per horse sold. A similar article was run in the Detroit Free Press on the same day. This article added that many BLM employees had purchased horses through the program, and now could not account for the horses' whereabouts. My further investigation unearthed an article written in Animal People Magazine refuting much of the "evidence" cited in the previous two articles and clarifying several points regarding the BLM's program and requirements for purchase and licensing of the horses. According to this in-depth article, the costs of maintaining and transporting a horse for a year was over $2,000. This made it unlikely anyone would seek a profit by selling the horse for $700 to a slaughterhouse. One company name appeared in all of these articles, as well as in the recent article in the New York times: Beltex Corporation of Fort Worth, TX. This company is listed on the website of the U.S. Meat Export Federation as supplying meat from horse and bison, which are apparently much in demand in other parts of the world, including Europe and Japan. The essence of the article in the New York Times is that California is now drafting a law to be held up for public referendum in November. This law would make it illegal to buy or sell a horse within the state of California if the intent is to use its meat for human consumption. The issue of whether people should eat horse meat seems to be pretty divisive, and perhaps that is to be expected. There is a certain group of familiar food animals that many of us are unwilling to venture out of: cattle, pigs, lamb, fish, maybe deer or rabbit. Not much else gets in or out. Additionally, the horse is a kind of symbol for Americans and the Wild West. Trigger is a particularly appropriate example, after the recent death of Roy Rogers (and in light of his chain of restaurants). Eating horse for many Americans would be akin to eating dog or hamster. Still, they are animals. And people do eat different things, depending on their culture. This is undoubtedly a difficult question to answer, and maybe it's surprising that California is so eager to put this issue to the vote. Is this something that really needs to be decided for an entire state? In the age of free market and the consumer's freedom of choice, I'm not so sure. -Chris  |
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