Legalized Slaughter of Horses for Human Consumption?

Post by **Frelga** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 2:06 am

What's wrong with sorbet? It's vegan.

Post by **River** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 2:14 am

Nothing's wrong with sorbet, but what S brought home was not sorbet. It was fake ice cream and it was a crime against nature.

Post by **vison** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 3:10 am

IAWR.

I once worked in an ice cream plant. We made fabulous full-cream ice cream. Anything else IS a crime against nature.

Post by **Lalaith** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 4:42 am

I also agree.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 5:21 am

If you're going to eat it, eat the good stuff.

The price also helps keep the frequency down.

Post by **Frelga** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 5:24 am

*sigh*
Oh, of course, of course. Now that my son grew out of milk allergy, I can agree.

Post by **anthriel** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 5:52 am

I don't really like ice cream. I know, it's weird.

Maria's post brings up something I've been thinking about for a while... is eating someone else's pet even safe? Pigs are generally raised for slaughter, cattle are raised for slaughter, and everyone knows their eventual fate. Horses, though, are probably not raised for slaughter (not in the USA, anyway). Lots of stuff is given to them throughout their life which may not be good for an eventual predator to injest.

Many of the products I use with my horses say "Not intended for use on an animal raised for human consumption", or somesuch. I wonder how dangerous some of those chemicals are?

Post by **SirDennis** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 4:55 pm

anthriel wrote:I don't really like ice cream. I know, it's weird.

Maria's post brings up something I've been thinking about for a while... is eating someone else's pet even safe? Pigs are generally raised for slaughter, cattle are raised for slaughter, and everyone knows their eventual fate. Horses, though, are probably not raised for slaughter (not in the USA, anyway). Lots of stuff is given to them throughout their life which may not be good for an eventual predator to injest.

Many of the products I use with my horses say "Not intended for use on an animal raised for human consumption", or somesuch. I wonder how dangerous some of those chemicals are?

This cuts to the heart of it for me. When it comes to animals in general, anything that itself eats meat or is primarily a scavenger is usually off the table. Same goes for herbivores that are not also ruminants (horses for instance). Though many will note right away the context (OT clean vs unclean) it was actually when studying Yoga 20 years ago that my thoughts about diet and nutrition really took hold.

Apart from the prohibition against killing animals arising from observance of Ahimsa (which I do not hold to regarding animals for food), what really caught my imagination was the physiological arguments proffered by Krshnas against meat eating. For example:

"Although some anthropologists contend that man is historically omnivorous, our anatomical equipment teeth, jaws, and digestive system favors a fleshless diet. The American Dietetic Association notes that “most of mankind for most of human history has lived on vegetarian or near-vegetarian diets.” And much of the world still lives that way. Even in most industrialized countries, the love affair with meat is less than a hundred years old. It started with the refrigerator car and the twentieth-century consumer society. But even with the twentieth century, man’s body hasn’t adapted to eating meat. One of the most important 18th century naturalists was a Swedish botanist and medical doctor named Karl von Linné who stated: “Man’s structure, external and internal, compared with that of the other animals, shows that fruit and succulent vegetables constitute his natural food.”
From: http://www.krishnapath.org/2010/10/huma ... ting-meat/

(NB Being a class on Yoga and Hinduism in general we also learned about Ayurvedic medicine which does recommend beef broth or actually eating meat for anemia or in some cases pregnancy.)

Another idea that comes from this realm is from the Seventh Day Adventist Church. They follow the OT doctrine of clean and unclean foods. But the founder of their sect wrote in the 1800's something to the effect "in future even meat that is "clean" from a Biblical perspective will be unsafe to eat because of pollutants and what they themselves are fed. Therefore it is best to avoid eating meat altogether." That is how SDA's became a vegetarian sect. When we look at what happened when the industry started mixing meat in with the grain fed to cows, that was a pretty good guess on her part.

Finally, years ago when I worked on an assembly line, an older gent said he no longer eats bacon because "the meat is so dirty these days because of what they feed them."

All of which is a long way of saying yes it is very important what (and how) our food eats. I believe it is well to consider too our own physical needs (deriving from our state of health), but also our physiology, that is, how humans process certain foods. (That last bit reinforces something I learned as a child in Scouts: Nightshade is edible to rabbits but to humans is poisonous, therefore it is not good to eat something just because you see another animal eat it.)

Post by **JewelSong** » Sat Dec 03, 2011 8:23 pm

I have experimented with a vegetarian diet - most recently last year when I was poor as a church mouse and trying to save money any way I could. Cutting meat out seemed a good way to save, so I did that. (And I know about how to eat a healthy non-meat diet and also how to cook really good veggie dishes)

The result was that my innards become, shall we say, liquified. I had almost constant diarrhea and/or very loose stools. To be blunt - I leaked.

I tried various combinations of foods, I gave it plenty of time (I'd say I was veggie for a good 6 months or so)...and I still had the same problem. I have found that I need to eat a certain amount of meat - beef, chicken or pork - in order to maintain a healthy gut. As soon as I stop, even for a couple of days...well...back to the leaking.

So, I'm a meat-eater and will remain so.

Post by **Maria** » Mon Dec 05, 2011 4:42 pm

My cattle and sheep eat only grass, some brush, and have access to a salt/mineral block. We don't use any kinds of chemicals on them and they stay healthy. The cattle don't even carry ticks, because the Pineywoods cows have taught the others to groom them off each other. I guess that's a trait that hasn't been bred out since they were feral not so long ago.

The only animals on our place that get treated for fleas and ticks are our dogs... so for that reason alone they will never be on the menu.

I don't like the thought of what gets put in commercial meat.

Our first home slaughter of a bull happened yesterday. It's several orders of magnitude more difficult than a deer. I thought it would just be an issue of handling so much more weight... but everything was harder. The skin was tougher and attached stronger. The bones were bigger and harder to saw through.

All in all getting the two halves ready to hang took hours longer than I thought it would and left us both completely exhausted and on the brink of bodily malfunction.

And I thought it would be just like a big deer.

Post by **Lalaith** » Mon Dec 05, 2011 4:48 pm

It does sound like an overwhelming task, Maria.

We have our deer back from the processor, and the freezer is packed full.

Jewel, I can have the same issues if I eat too many fruits and veggies.

How do vegetarians get around that? Or do some people just seem to be able to handle that better than others? I wonder if probiotics would help.

Post by **vison** » Mon Dec 05, 2011 4:57 pm

I think eventually your body would adjust.

Maria, we once butchered a steer that DRESSED 2300 pounds. He was a Hereford/Holstein cross and he was four years old. Enormous. When it was hanging the back end was only about 2 inches from the floor, there was just no room to winch it up higher in the shed. It took my husband and 2 other guys all day to deal with it, and the 2 guys were professional butchers. They were used to having all kinds of power tools just to dress a beef. When it came to cutting it up, it was a real undertaking with the wrong tools. The round steaks were the size of a bathmats. But it was good eating. We had the hide in the big freezer for years, we were going to get it tanned, but in the end we didn't.

Post by **Maria** » Mon Dec 05, 2011 5:19 pm

Like I've said before, we have small cattle. The hanging weight (is that the same as "dressed" weight?) was just 300 lbs, which means the live weight was probalby 400 lbs. More or less.

I can't imagine doing one over a ton!

For that matter, slaughtering a horse would be a daunting proposition. Most breeds are as big or bigger than cattle. Kinda. Sorta. I really don't know. They are taller, at least!