Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of hoopla surrounding a few instances of horseflesh being sold as beef in Europe.

While I agree that public deception is not acceptable in most cases, including this one, I don’t see what the big deal is with eating a little horse.

Or a big horse, depending on what is at your disposal.

It is an accepted scientific opinion that horsemeat was a normal source of protein during human development, after all.

Do we even consider why we recoil at the thought of eating meat from a horse when most of us don’t even blink before digging into a dish of chitlins or even opossum?
(Don’t even act like you’ve never had this stuff. If you’ve lived here your whole life, chances are you have, whether you know it or not.)

Take a minute to research the process by which the eating of horseflesh became taboo and you’ll find that the stigma associated with horseflesh finds its roots dug deep into the dark soil of economic stratification and papal decrees intended to prevent the pagan practice of ritual consumption of horsemeat.

Purely culinary norms aren’t what prevents the use of horse in the kitchen; According to Viande Richelieu, a French meat retailer, horsemeat is “slightly sweet, tender and low in fat.”  Instead, a papal campaign from the 700s restricts what could otherwise be a large economic market.

When was the last time you stood beside a horse? Those suckers are big – you could get a lot of meat from just one of them!

Sure, you aren’t going to butcher your kid’s pet horse, but what about the rest of them?

Does Charlotte’s Web or Babe make pork any less appetizing?
And the fact that big business hasn’t yet hopped on the horse bandwagon assures that the meat that you might be able to find in the States would be quality stuff.
You’ve fed that horse for a long time; now it is time for it to feed you!
In the next week, think carefully about the things that you eat.

Printed in the February 28, 2013