US consumers have been relieved to know that American meat has not been tainted, and when we buy beef, that is what we are getting. But horse meat is no longer far away especially with all the push to kill horses by legislative types.
The New York Times has recently reported that a horse slaughterhouse is just about ready to open its doors. This slaughterhouse is not in Oklahoma as many suspected – it is in New Mexico. That New Mexico plant can be open for horse processing in less than two months. The “factory,” as the Department of Agriculture calls the slaughterhouse, just requires USDA’s go-ahead.
No operating slaughterhouse has been in business in the United States since 2007. With the New Mexico “factory,” the horse killings can begin anew.
When we think about, it is just one slaughterhouse that happens to process horses. Woah! According to a spokesman, the USDA confirms that there are multiple companies that want to become operational in the United States. Horse slaughter seems to have become big business and has attracted much attention.
People tend toward apathy and do not have the longevity or interest to stay involved in issues. In Europe, sales of the “horse meat/beef products” are going way up due to curiosity and “So? It’s horse meat” attitudes. What gets people more upset is the fraud, and lets not forget the possibility of real crime, rather than the horse meat.
Take us here in the United States, however. Horse is just not an everyday staple nor is it a meat we’d ever contemplated eating. There are those that are pushing to change all that.
Most Americans have problems about eating horse meat - it seems morally wrong. After all, we don’t eat dogs or cats either.
Yet the push to open horse slaughterhouses in the United States is ever growing. Slaughter of horses is being pushed to save poor horses from abandonment, cruelty and is a purported “kind way to end horse misery.” Any horse person well knows that this simply not so. There is nothing kind or humane about horse slaughter, based simply on the species alone. They are smart, intuitive and are exposed from near-birth to people and interacting with them on a very personal level. A horse is not a livestock animal that is fed to put meat on it and then it is “harvested.” Instead, a horse is a companion. It is a partner with humans. It feels, it senses, and does our bidding in close and daily contact.
It is a sad fact that horse slaughter is back on the table in so many different ways.
Source: Huffington Post
Never kill any animals even for the purpose of sacrifice. Non-violence is the greatest of all religions - by Swami Sahajanand, Divine Life Society
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