Horse Meat. (Timeline: Late 1950s)

This is largely my comments from a discussion on a list I belong to. We started out discussing what happened to the cavalry horses after the two world wars, and drifted into the eating of horse meat.

In Denmark, when I grew up, it was not unheard of to eat horse meat. We would mostly eat beef, pork, or fish (most often cod), but all kinds of meat was available. I have loved horses since I was a toddler, and my mother respected that I did NOT want to eat horse meat, but I know she and my brother did. Not often, but occassionally. My brother used to tease me about it, too! I have tried whale, shark (both fishy tasting; ugh!), octopus, eel, elephant, duck, goose, and I can't think of what else. My mother wanted us to have different experiences, and did her best for us within her very limited budget.

I don't think there is anything intrinsically wrong with eating horse meat. I CHOOSE to not eat my friends, or anyone related to my equine friends; however remote. I also choose to not knowingly eat meat from any other animal that I have known personally. A few of my friends have raised cows or pigs for slaughter, but I have always stayed away from eating those. Heck; I even have a hard time eating the eggs from the chickens that seem to hang around my barn from time to time. In my defense, I was city bred and raised.

Even though I, as a rule, don't think the less of people who eat horse meat, or even dog or cat meat for that matter, I remember one incident from when I was a teenager that really rubbed me the wrong way. Hanging around with the ponies at Fortunen, we also had contact with several thoroughbred trainers that had stables nearby, and of course we knew the horses too. One of Brandy's fellow racers, who was stabled a block from the pony stable, had gotten injured while racing. I can't recall his name, but I can still picture him in my mind. He was chunky as racehorses go; looked almost quarterhorsey. A dark bay with a small star and one white fetlock. Well, it was decided that he couldn't recover enough to make it back to the race track, and he hadn't done well enough on the track to be valuable at stud, so they had him slaughtered, and they ATE him! I didn't much mind the slaughter, but I didn't like the idea of them eating an animal THEY had cared for for several years, ever since he was a long yearling. To my way of thinking that was crossing the line. Especially talking and joking about it. They should at least have kept it to themselves!