Horse Slaughter

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.

Horse Meat Production Levels
as of 2009
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:

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    And the poor, when they’re old, have little of peace!
    James Kenneth Stephens (1882–1950)

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    Derek Walcott (b. 1930)