Sorry for the tone of my prior response. Cultural differences.
Um… actually I know people who have done just that, taken home the deer they just hit (not deliberately). I think the ban is on SELLING venison, even if you did legally hunt it in season and that might also extend to “farm-raised” deer as well.
Not that a post-motor-vehicle-accident deer is kosher, either.
Eating roadkill is legal in Oregon and a friend damned near roadkilled a couple of people as they were dragging a hit deer off a blind curve road in the dark and rain. Way to die for ya dinner, you idiots!
Hope that she never wormed that particular horse or gave it butazolidin or some other drug during its lifetime. Those have been labeled as toxic to humans and put on the “never acceptable at all” list for horsemeat exported from North America to the EU. And of course those rules and regulations are treated with a wink and a smile by people who trade in horses for slaughter. If you are eating European-bred horse they have to have a passport that states that they have never been given any sort of forbidden drug. Horsemeat in Asia–I would check where it originated. Of course I’m prejudiced because I’m a lifetime horseperson–also dogperson and catperson, so nope on those too.
That particular horse was totally undrugged, but that is besides the point. It is cute how aghast Americans here treat my simple freezer contents with tales of woe and warnings of the PETA strain, cite:
So, you are claiming that any drug given to horses is toxic to humans? Yeah, right. Blanket statement of the year, even if it’s still early.
So, you claim that a toxic drug given to a meat animal any time in it’s lifetime results in toxification of humans consuming the meat? Yeah, right. Drugs stay inside animals forever, that’s how they work their magic, yep. Also, any over the counter drug is toxic, given a large enough dose.
I can’t go to a supermarket without finding dozens of food items with horse meat in them. This is not some special case. People regularly consume horse meat all over Europe, especially in cured meats, but also as steak, stew etc. Strict regulation on horse meat abounds here, as in everything else in the EU. Sure, there is food fraud, as with olive oil and organic farm produce, but there are ways to deal with it.
I personally only eat domestic horse, which is used by the domestic meat suppliers. But the millions of Europeans who aren’t as picky still enjoy excellent health and longevity compared to the US. These tales of tainted horse meat dangers are just animal rights propaganda.
I’ts funny how the horse persons here emerge from hibernation to rise up to the challenge of putting evil horse eaters in their place. I know tons of horse people. Like I said, they provide me with horse meat and urge me and others to eat horse. You guys have an irrational cultural bias where pigs, cows and sheep are eaten, but horses, another domesticated herbivorous mammal, is not.
Horses are meat animals, and they know it, too. We have been eating horses far longer than we have been riding them. And we still do, with gusto. Horse meat is loaded with iron, low fat and tasty as fuck, after all.
There’s truth to this, sure. A pretty fundamental truth, in fact, where “different” is judged by the ignorant as “inferior” or worse, merely because it’s different, and which is thus the source of all bigotry.
But there is also a position in philosophy – one which I subscribe to – that says that there is a rational, objective basis for morality. Empathy – for our fellow humans, and our fellow animals – does have a rational basis, in my view.
Without getting into this potential digression in depth, here’s a picture that may help to illuminate what I’m saying:
It’s from 2006 and concerns the slaughter of some 50,000 dogs in southwestern China, mostly by beating them to death with sticks. This was apparently an attempt to control a rabies outbreak.
Now putting aside the question of what monumental incompetence and callousness allowed the rabies outbreak to happen, nothing could possibly justify the cruelty with how they responded to it.
Is it then just a coincidence that this is the culture that breeds and tortures Saint Bernard dogs solely for the meat (the torture is supposed to improve the meat quality)? I don’t know, but I see a certain consistency. And if we here in the West are horrified by these things, are we merely being bigoted against the “different”, or is there an objective standard of morality by which these things should be judged?
I would quote Archie “You really whipped up a winner this time!”
Dogs are what you eat when trying to reach the South Pole alive – and return in the same condition.
I’m going outside now. I may be some time.