I have to think that the posters who say what's the difference between slaughtering a cow and horse have never had anything to do with horses.

And I have to think that posters who say there's a world of difference between slaughtering a horse and a cow have never had anything to do with cows or oxen, at least not ones which were raised regularly being handled in a friendly way by humans, as horses usually are. I grew up on a farm commune of 60s idealists in Pennsylvania, who didn't believe in killing animals. We had a herd of cows which we milked, and tried to do as much of the farm work as possible with oxen. Our cows and oxen were very friendly, many of them knew their own names, they each had their own personality, liked being scratched and petted, the oxen were well trained and obeyed verbal commands. As an adult, I'm not a vegetarian and don't think everyone should be living by the ideals I grew up with. However due to my upbringing with friendly cattle and horses, I also know that only pure sentimentality justifies giving horses a special place over cows.

That said, I do relate to people who feel more sorry for one species of animal than another. For instance I share the usual American abhorrence to eating dogs or cats. When I was visiting Laos and saw people roasting a dog on a spit, I was grossed out and felt bad for the dog, and wouldn't have partaken of the meat. However that feeling of revulsion didn't prevent me from recognizing that my reaction was just due to my conditioning from having grown up in a culture where dogs are commonly kept as pets. I think it would have been irrational for me to consider the people cooking the dog to be any more inhumane and cruel than people who would cook a pig in the USA. Pigs are smart and friendly when raised as pets also.

In summary, while I respect that some people relate personally more with horses and dogs, than with cows and pigs, I cannot respect it when they try to make moral absolutes out of their personal feelings.

Horses are the partners to man and for centuries have helped him through war and work and to settle new lands, indeed to survive. Without the horse, we would have been walking from the east coast to California and Alaska and it would have taken generations longer to accomplish settling the US.

Oxen have been used as work animals too for probably as long as horses, so humanity owes them just as much of a debt. In some cultures oxen are used much more than horses even. So this distinction between horses and cattle just comes down to sentimentality.

"In my culture we treat horses as companions, and therefore I can relate to a horse as a living creature with its own feelings, but I don't relate to a cow the same way. Therefore I declare that it's fine to slaughter cows, but it's morally repugnant to slaughter horses."

As long as humane and sanitary standards are followed, I can't see much argument for the premise that it's fine to eat cows and pigs but not horses. Sorry, but while horses are pretty and smart and have other uses, granted, they aren't as smart as pigs and little baby lambs are arguably cuter and no one makes much of a deal about bashing their skulls in, slicing through their bones, tendons and bloody muscle tissue with saws, cleavers and knives so we can then blister the flesh over fire, masticate it, swallow it and turn it into feces. Sounds like special interest to me.

As the owner of a horse who probably would have gone to slaughter as his next step (12yo unbroke mustang with abuse history and hence not the most cooperative animal in the world) I still can't bring myself to reject slaughter outright. I enjoy eating meat and do it on a regular basis, and those who point out that there is hypocrisy in eating meat and yet condemning horse slaughter are absolutely correct. I couldn't ever eat horse meat myself, but it's not my place to lecture people who might choose to when I enjoy burgers and grilled chicken all summer.

On the other hand, those who say that horse slaughter is cruelty are absolutely correct. The processing and slaughter of cattle has been standardized and specialized over the years to involve as little discomfort and trauma as possible. Possibly because of the horse's midway status between livestock and companion animal, there has been squeamishness over the study it would take to design a responsible, humane path to slaughter.

Captive bolt, presented in this article as the best of the options, is still not a very good one: horses are quick-moving, skittish animals, and the bolt often misses, with horrifying consequences. Shipping via cattle truck, as pointed out, is an extremely poor solution that results in badly injured and traumatized horses even before they are put into slaughter chutes.

My horse will never go to slaughter, nor will any horse I have control over. I will also never breed a horse, volunteer at rescues, and will try my best to find all future horses at rescues or last-chance auctions. That's what I can do, personally, to help the situation; in the meantime, however, unless everyone else acts similarly, we need a (humane!) slaughter option - which doesn't currently exist.

I think the article asked some really tough questions, and people who love animals could have a lot of different answers to them.

But some people responding to this piece are not taking an honest look at the moral questions raised by horse slaughter. We do not raise cattle as our friends and companions. We do not make them work for us. We do not breed them for intelligence and the ability to form close bonds with humans.

Yes, we've always eaten horses, donkeys, water buffalo, camels, even elephants, in spite of the work they do for us, and the bonds we form with them. We've eaten dogs and cats as well. We still do sometimes. Because we're animals too, and we do what we have to in order to survive.

This isn't survival. This is betrayal. If you keep an animal as a companion, a friend, a helpmate, then you have taken responsibility for its welfare, no less than if you'd adopted a child. The animal in question would never kill and eat you simply because you'd gotten old and useless and in the way. So what are we saying? That we're LESS humane than our dogs, cats, and horses?

There is no perfectly ethical answer to be found here, or for any other complex moral issue, but that doesn't mean you can just dismiss it with a glib remark about how we eat chickens and pigs and they're alive. Yes, they are. They're alive, and intelligent, and have feelings, and taste good, and while I'm a vegetarian, I feed all of them to my dog. And I eat eggs.

But if you keep any animal as a pet, make it think of you as a family member, then sell it for slaughter like it was just a thing, you are simply demonstrating the truth of the axiom that man is the only truly ungrateful animal.

Like the fox said to the Little Prince, you become responsible, FOREVER, for what you have tamed.