Are you stupid or perhaps just lazy in not learning about your diet?

Key question: Do you seek out the most drug and chemical laden beef, pork and chicken to augment the toxic horsemeat in your diet?

Since many of you seem to be big on doing this for shock value or for the "thrill" of "exotic" eating, do you weigh your decision to eat this meat with the very real risk of ingesting carcinogenic and toxic insecticides, drugs and other chemicals?

Do you care that you are eating extremely "polluted" flesh?

Do you realize that EVERY single insect spray, wormer, and drug that is used for horses *and they are used daily, weekly, monthly all through their lives* carries a warning like this one on the label:

"CAUTION: Not for use on animals INTENDED FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION"?

Do you care about your own health and that of your offspring? Or is the shock value and the thrill of exotic more important to you?

This information is given by a horseman in an attempt to share valuable information about the keeping of horses. If you have no experience in this, you may not have known the risks. Now you do. Make your choices but make them from a place of knowledge.

My opinion: I'm not in favor of selling horsemeat to Europe or Asia for human consumption. They can and should breed their own horsemeat to supply themselves. But since they find a way to get our horsemeat anyway, let the idiots eat our toxic horseflesh and if they develop horrible diseases, well, they asked for it and they will just be realizing their just rewards. You are what you eat!

"Seriously, breed associations NEED TO BE HEAVILY REGULATED so they QUIT PROMOTING INDISCRIMINATE BREEDING."

Good. Make it so.

Until then, we ignorant domestic horse slaughter supporters have the correct approach, despite our apparent lack of right to hold opinions of our own.

When you accomplish your task of eliminating indiscriminate breeding, surplus horses will not be around for the slaughterers to utilize, and the problem will be solved.

Currently, it would be cheaper for a domestic slaughter industry to implement a few horse-specific transport and humane death requirements than they are currently spending transporting big animals hundreds of miles and crossing customs to access foreign facilities.

Deal with the excess horse population in the U.S. and the profitability of unregulated foreign slaughterhouses will disappear. If you and those who agree with can't get horse reproduction under control, then a regulated domestic slaughter industry is the most humane and economically intelligent solution.

The beef I buy is all grass and forage fed, is slaughtered at 4 years instead of 18 months, gets no grain, gets no drugs and and is killed by lethal injection. I pay a significant premium for this beef, but I have visited the ranch and have seen the entire operation including the killing. Same with pork and chicken.

This is news to me. I would have thought that the lethal injection would make the animal unfit for human consumption. Can you provide some more information about the businesses that do this, such as a website?

Thanks.

Alice (as in Wonderland) said it best on an anti-slaughter blog:

"Horses said: I'll put up with you on my back, I'll run around the track for you, I'll carry this silly kid in her lesson, pull this carriage through the streets of New York, because I don't think you're going to kill me and eat me. Yeah. Uh-huh.

Horses have been our companions for thousands of years -- we'd still be sitting in caves if it weren't for them. And for those who think they're just another "farm animal" -- how many other farm animals compete in the Olympics? How many farm animals excite passions like Mine That Bird and Rachel Alexandra? How many of them even have NAMES?

The horse slaughter industry is simply obscene.

It's all money. It has nothing to do with humane treatment. You can't get money for your horse if you have him humanely euthanized. It disgusts me that these organizations are in the pocket of the meat industry -- just as the USDA used to be. Maybe still is; the jury is still out."

Barn back in -- Follow the money, AQHA.

I mean, even more than are stuck into our pigs, cows, goats, chickens, and sheep.

Hell, we should eat all our pets when they reach the end of their useless lives!!!

Cat legs look a lot like rabbit when they are cooked.

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Dumbasses. You never eat a pet. If it's raised for food, it's food. If it's raised for personality, communication, or intelligence, it's a companion animal.

A horse could be raised for food. I wouldn't eat it anyway, but that's just me. But a horse that spent it's life listening to kind words, who worked with a jockey to try to win a race, who provided happy afternoons of contentment to young boys and girls on a riding farm - that animal should not be tortured to death.

Horses that become friends should not be sold like a hunk of meat. Thanks would be to set them free in some quiet coral somewhere to eat hay their last few years, or to mercifully put them down if they are lame.

but she is by definition unqualified to deal with some of the emotional issues involved.

for this reason alone horses should not be slaughtered for meat. Of course they will have to be killed some other way, nobody disputes this.

Look, humans are omnivores. It's been advantageous to us as a species as we can eat and thrive eating nearly everything.

In the wide variety of human beings, some indeed thrive well or even best on a diet with no meat whatsoever.

In the wide variety of human beings, some indeed thrive well or even best on a diet that includes meat.

Neither side insisting that what they do is best makes for everyone makes it so.

Recently PBS has twice broadcast an interesting and moving program about a special program in Lexington.

Unwanted, old or injured thoroughbreds are cared for every day by prisoners who are brought to the site in the morning and returned to their cells at night. All the prisoners attest to the love that develops between them and their charges. They also attest to the personal improvement they ascribe to this work as well as their joy in acquiring unusual new skills.

The prisoners are students in the program, sitting near the stalls with their books and notebooks, learning before they venture into the fields with their assigned horses.

Apparently the horses are so well-trained that a fair number are adopted by people who want them for pets.