Horse slaughter is the practice of slaughtering horses to produce meat for consumption.
Human beings have consumed horse meat since the earliest days of human history: the oldest known cave art, the thirty-thousand year-old paintings in the Chauvet Cave of modern France, show horses prominently alongside other wild animals hunted by humans. The later domestication of the horse is widely held to have been initiated for the purposes of raising horses for slaughter for human consumption. However, modern horse slaughter has become highly controversial in many parts of the world, based on a multiplicity of concerns: e.g., whether horses are or can be managed humanely in industrial-scale slaughter; whether horses not purpose-raised for consumption are likely to yield safe meat; whether it is appropriate to consume a creature that has become a companion animal in affluent societies.
Horse meat is a quite dry meat to cook, it is common to add some extra fat from other animals (like bacon) to increase its softness when roasted.
Country | Tons per year |
---|---|
Mexico | 78,000 |
Argentina | 57,000 |
Kazakhstan | 55,000 |
Mongolia | 38,000 |
Kyrgyzstan | 25,000 |
United States | 25,000 |
Australia | 24,000 |
Brazil | 21,000 |
Canada | 18,000 |
Poland | 18,000 |
Italy | 16,000* |
Romania | 14,000 |
Chile | 10,000 |
France | 7,500 |
Uruguay | 8,000 |
Senegal | 9,500 |
Colombia | 6,000 |
Spain | 5,000* |
Read more about Horse Slaughter: Slaughtering, United Kingdom, Rest of European Union, History
Famous quotes containing the words horse and/or slaughter:
“I am a good horse to travel, but not from choice a roadster. The landscape-painter uses the figures of men to mark a road. He would not make that use of my figure.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“When offense occurred, Slaughter took the trail, and seldom returned with a live prisoner. Usually he reported that he had chased the suspect clean out of the county; these suspects never reappeared in Tombstoneor anywhere else.”
—Administration in the State of Ariz, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)