Horse Column Stirs The Stew

A horse is a horse, of course, of course. But when you start talking about eating the famous Mr. Ed – whoa, Nelly!

I didn’t “jump on the pro-horse slaughter bandwagon” in last Sunday’s column, as one reader alleged, but I did open the barn door to the idea that there might be a better way to discuss whether we should allow a horse slaughterhouse to open in New Mexico than simply saying “gross” and “hell, no.”

The column elicited a wave of response – a strong dose of anger, a good bit of cheering, a few first-person reviews of horse (lean, sweet, pretty tasty) and some interesting points of view that were new to me. (You know it’s going to be an eventful Sunday when at 6 a.m. you already have an email with the subject line “You are clueless!”)

So I’ll turn the space over to you today. Here’s a sampling of where you took the discussion:

Kristen Bogren, a horse owner in Los Lunas, said, “It’s easy to take the Meat is Meat standpoint, but there will NOT be a horse slaughter plant in New Mexico. Hell anywhere in the U.S. if the people who care have a say.”

She continued, “The country needs to adopt low-cost gelding clinics, and low-cost euthanasia clinics to help with our overpopulation problem. Slaughter is only the answer to the people that shouldn’t have had a horse to begin with.”

Kathy from Rio Rancho said, “I am not a vegetarian, but I think it’s hypocritical to eat a steak and then say that eating horse meat is immoral. Meat is meat. I grew up on a farm, so I have a more realistic view of where meat comes from than many other omnivores have. Yes, we had sheep, and we killed and ate our pet lamb when it was old enough. Good, too. If people saw the way cattle are treated at feedlots, a lot of them might give up steak, too!”

Gordon Jemeyson offered the point of view that it’s immoral to allow killing even if it appears more humane that other options.

“The problem with your persuasive, and indeed humane, argument for allowing horse slaughter in these United States, means we condone it; and if financially successful in New Mexico, it will spread to other states and lead to further acceptance, and we lose the perception of ourselves as holding the moral high ground,” he wrote. “We lose that and we lose our justification for arguing against the practice.” He added, “And if the question comes up, I too am a vegetarian.”

A reader left this opposite view on my voice mail: “It is a natural fact of life that everything that lives, dies and it needs to be consumed or disposed of.”

Rebecca Jolin of Albuquerque wrote, “As disheartening as your article is to us who oppose horse slaughter, there is a way to look at this situation without being overly emotional or hyperbolic. The most indisputable key to this problem is the sheer lack of responsible ownership on behalf of the horse owners who contribute to the unwanted horse problem. Abandonment is surely not the answer, but slaughter is not the answer either. Due to the natural condition of the horse, which I might add is not at all similar to cows, there is no way to deem horse slaughter humane.”

Nancy Henry from Corrales (the author of the “You are clueless!” line) went on to say, “Are you also pro unwanted dog & cat slaughter? Maybe the proposed horse slaughter plant in Roswell can assist with these unwanted animals as well, and ship their meat off to Taiwan, Philippines, China, etc.”

The horse problem, she said, requires more government restriction, not less. “The long term plan,” she said, “is to ban the transport of horses to slaughter, then they must be taken care of responsibly and humanely here, and then the process of responsible horse ownership begins. All good things take some time.”

An old horseshoer called to say that if horse slaughter was completely banned by outlawing transport to foreign slaughterhouses, “it would be the absolute worst thing that could happen. I can guarantee you if that happens you’ll have abandoned, starving horses all over the place.”

Valerie Cole, an Albuquerque horsewoman, wrote, “While I would not personally consign my horse to an auction, horses are livestock under the law and this is a reasonable option for owners who cannot support and maintain them any longer – or whose horses are no longer suitable due to physical or mental infirmities or age. A proposed processing plant in New Mexico … would also minimize transport, which can be difficult to regulate humanely.”

Ben Blackwell of Corrales, didn’t see a reason for any of the hubbub. “The Roswell guy is trying to keep his business going,” he wrote. “I have seen ‘equine’ meat for sale in nice Italian supermarkets. If you don’t want to eat Trigger (or Fido), then don’t. We need the government to stop telling us what quality we can eat and focus more on reducing the quantity.”

David West, a professor at New Mexico Highlands University, weighed in with a little historical perspective. Specialty meat markets have always carried horse meat, he said. “Most recently, circa 1973/1974, there was a huge ‘beef crisis’ in the U.S. (close in time to the first great ‘gas crisis’). Supermarkets around the U.S. added a horse meat section as a price alternative to beef. … For about a year I worked at a small market in Portland, Oregon that operated an in-store butcher shop that sold horse exclusively – and never lacked for customers – the lines were often as long as those outside for the gas pumps. They had been selling horse alongside beef for years before the ‘crisis’ as well as years after the ‘crisis’ passed.”

We’ll end with Bill Alford’s email in which he waxed eloquent on all matter of meat: “You and I are in complete agreement on horse meat. Real Americans won’t eat Seabiscuit. But we gobble up Elsie and Elmer and Elsie’s calf whose name I can’t remember (you may be too young to remember Elsie). We wolf down Bugs, and Peter and Flopsie and Thumper. Billy Goat Gruff down the pie hole. And Chicken Little is too sad to think about. But the biggest hypocrisy is eating Babe and Porky; a species much smarter than horses and closer to us anatomically. They are tasty though.”

UpFront is a daily front-page news and opinion column. Comment directly to Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com. Go to www.abqjournal.com/letters/new to submit a letter to the editor.
— This article appeared on page A1 of the Albuquerque Journal