Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

[Angry Cat]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

Are you inferring our continental cousins are less than decent, how very dare you.

Yes!

[lexis200]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

More to the point it's implying that anyone who doesn't think it's morally bankrupt to eat horse isn't decent, and there's more than one post in that vein! Talk about agree or be damned!

I have to query again AC, you state 'noble steed' yet advocate betting on them in the Grand National (where they are whipped to go faster and will be killed if they break a leg on any one of the treacherous jumps). Equally you consider it fine and noble that they were used in battle, again for human gain, and again where they will have been very much in harms way. Personally I'd consider both of those far less moral than using them for food (as long as they are kept well, but that goes for anything we eat).

Also, you keep saying its cheaper to bulk cook than buy. If you're buying own brand/value etc that's just not true. When I make a lasagne for four I'm looking at about £6. I could buy a meal deal with sides for that in tesco. Ditto cottage pie, fish pie, anything with chicken breast (because I use free range, but have to have it less as it's stupid expensive). I choose to make my own as its how I was brought up, and because as you say, it really is more healthy. I can fully understand though if you're having to cut back on every penny why people would choose that option, and I don't think it's fair to suggest people are somehow lazy/slacking/unhealthy/obese because of it. Some will be, but then some people who cook from scratch will be equally unhealthy/slobby etc.


Gravytrain, is that 15% statistic really what they reckon now (not suggesting you're lying, I'm just amazed at that figure!)? Our spend for a family of four is around a third of monthly income. I don't think I could do it for 15%! Or maybe OH just doesn't earn enough - I'll have a word

[gravytrain]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

More to the point it's implying that anyone who doesn't think it's morally bankrupt to eat horse isn't decent, and there's more than one post in that vein! Talk about agree or be damned!

I have to query again AC, you state 'noble steed' yet advocate betting on them in the Grand National (where they are whipped to go faster and will be killed if they break a leg on any one of the treacherous jumps). Equally you consider it fine and noble that they were used in battle, again for human gain, and again where they will have been very much in harms way. Personally I'd consider both of those far less moral than using them for food (as long as they are kept well, but that goes for anything we eat).

Also, you keep saying its cheaper to bulk cook than buy. If you're buying own brand/value etc that's just not true. When I make a lasagne for four I'm looking at about £6. I could buy a meal deal with sides for that in tesco. Ditto cottage pie, fish pie, anything with chicken breast (because I use free range, but have to have it less as it's stupid expensive). I choose to make my own as its how I was brought up, and because as you say, it really is more healthy. I can fully understand though if you're having to cut back on every penny why people would choose that option, and I don't think it's fair to suggest people are somehow lazy/slacking/unhealthy/obese because of it. Some will be, but then some people who cook from scratch will be equally unhealthy/slobby etc.


Gravytrain, is that 15% statistic really what they reckon now (not suggesting you're lying, I'm just amazed at that figure!)? Our spend for a family of four is around a third of monthly income. I don't think I could do it for 15%! Or maybe OH just doesn't earn enough - I'll have a word

Yes it was mentioned on the news last night by the guy from Iceland.(the supermarket not the country)

I find it quite easy to believe, many will go to Lidle and buy a trolley full of white label goods, I think it is an indictment of how low on the agenda a healthy diet is to many people.
i know that many have no option. But it does amaze me that half of my granddaughters friends cannot afford school dinners but they all seem to posses a Blackberry on contract.

[Salmon Man]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

How can we claim that anything others decide to do is morally wrong? Surely we're making a moral judgement in the first instance?

Horses for courses, eh? eace:

[MissFM]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

Hello Aall,
I have read this thread with great interest and all the differring opinions expressed. As some one who earns my living from the land by dairy farming I would like to make the following points and observations.

As farmers you have to accept that the keeping of livestock means that at some point you have to make the decision when an animals life must come to an end, whether that be because in beef production they are "prime" and are ready for slaughter or as mostly in our case they have ended their productive life and/or illness has become chronic etc.

The issue for me is that this process is done with the utmost integrity and that should be for all livestock. Cattle can be moved expertly with little stress if operatives are competent but will be highly stressed if they are not. Sadly so much of the consistency that is needed to make this process as stress free as it should be is compromised by humanity ( it's inconsistency) In 2001 our herd was lost in the foot and mouth outbreak. It was diagonosed on a saturday evening in March and the slaughter was arranged for the monday morning. A neighbour who had lost his the previous week told me whatever I did, make sure I stayed on the farm all day until the slaughter was finished to see that it was done properly.I fretted about it all day Sunday but did as he said.


Two men came ( a father and son ) who were owners of a small abbattoir. They sorted the penning system passage to the crate and organised the immediate carcass removal from it. At no time all day did I see an animal stressed or upset. They were masters of their trade and were professionals and thus a most distressing time for me was balanced with seeing this job done with such integrity. And out of that whole sorry episode I still say ten years on that it was the most important thing I did was staying on site that day, I put every animal in the crate myself.


The greater problem now is that farming in real terms has very few customers, i.e the retailers who have to deliver profits, when economies become deatabilised as they have in the last few years and consumer spend has tightened margins are cut all the way down the chain and this time it coincided with a global tightening of beef supply. This collision of circumstances was the inevitable conduit for the relatively cheap horsemeat to enter the chain, it is that simple.

I for one enjoy all types of meat, and I also state that no one enjoys vegetables and fruit more than I do, the great distress for me in the modern food chain is that properly used our resoursce in terms of food production in the world could feed so many more people with a "BALANCED" diet if the science was used for proper purpose, that technology is embraced properly at all stages within the chain because that is where the stress free treatment of the animals farmed within it can come from, and believe me there are extremes in the other direction where some farmers will treat their animals to a level that a vast number of the human race never experience. Like it or not I think food costs to us all will become a bigger part of our cost of living, the World is always becoming hungrier and for now more affluent (developing countries). Methods of farming will become far more intensive but that doesn't mean animal welfare needs to suffer, what is important is that good stockmen//women can get the financial rewards that their commitment deserves, for now that is not the case but hopefuly that can be made to change. Farmers and their representatives talk to much to themselves and only a few communicate outwardly to their customers (the consumers) and tend to feel they must represent the good life type mentality. That sadly is not much more than subsistance farming and cannot, rightly or wrongly meet the demands that will be put upon it.

Kanine thank you so much for that post - you have put how things stand for farmers so well. x

[Angry Cat]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

More to the point it's implying that anyone who doesn't think it's morally bankrupt to eat horse isn't decent, and there's more than one post in that vein! Talk about agree or be damned!

I have to query again AC, you state 'noble steed' yet advocate betting on them in the Grand National...

No I didn't, those words were enclosed within a quote and were written by Tom Parker Bowles last weekend in the Sunday Mail!

[Eloise01]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

Yes!

And there we go. You said earlier on that the title of this thread reflected your personal opinion and nothing more. But it is no longer personal opinion, is it? You are now making judgements about other people who do not share your opinion. Who are you to decide who is "decent" and who is not? It's the slippery slope that I spoke about earlier... I rest my case. Morals are personal and individual, and when they become more than that, they become something else which is not quite as high minded.

[jon1965]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

I have to agree with Eloise, she got there before I could.

If you had said, black, Jewish, Asian you would have been quite rightly scorned.
How dare you say that one group of people are better than another or have better moral values. That was also a tactic used by the Nazis.

[gravytrain]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

Are you inferring our continental cousins are less than decent, how very dare you.

Hang on, when I asked the above question it was intended to be tongue in cheek. I presumed the answer was equally so,
I don't think anyone can say that one group of people are morally superior than any other because of their diet, can they.

[Eloise01]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

I have to agree with Eloise, she got there before I could.

If you had said, black, Jewish, Asian you would have been quite rightly scorned.
How dare you say that one group of people are better than another or have better moral values. That was also a tactic used by the Nazis.

And that was exactly the point I tried to make earlier in the thread. Not that people are Nazis or holocaust deniers or anything else, but that the slippery slope to totalitarianism exists as soon as we move from what we personally believe to judging people based purely on our own "moral" standards because we are then judging them less than we are because they do not believe what we believe.

[Eloise01]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

Hang on, when I asked the above question it was intended to be tongue in cheek. I presumed the answer was equally so,
I don't think anyone can say that one group of people are morally superior than any other because of their diet, can they.

The answer was "yes!" - quite emphatic and quite clearly stated. If that was not what was meant, then it should have been made more clear.

[jon1965]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

I know it is difficult sometimes to convey emotions on a forum but there is no indication that the reply was anything but genuine. There are, as Elosie says, ways to make things clearer

[MissFM]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

:hand:whooaaahhh! Whoah. Hold your horses.

AngryCat is the only one left on this thread allowed to express a view that it is personal anathema to some to eat horses. He is in a minority of one on this thread as it has developed (although I would make it two). Yes, he made a little joke at the expense of the French (a national past-time n'est-ce pas?).

The evangelical meat-eaters who claim to be arguing from a logical point of view (horse-lovers being unashamedly emotional/experience/perception based) would do well to check the frequency with which they are using logical fallacies to bully AC and anyone who agrees with him (in addition to "Straw Man" and the Hitler one I have counted another 3 without really looking...) http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy

[leclerc]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...WILL-more.html

Is it this one which is the bottom part of the story?

[leclerc]

Re: Morally wrong to eat horses!!!

:hand:whooaaahhh! Whoah. Hold your horses.

AngryCat is the only one left on this thread allowed to express a view that it is personal anathema to some to eat horses. He is in a minority of one on this thread as it has developed (although I would make it two). Yes, he made a little joke at the expense of the French (a national past-time n'est-ce pas?).

The evangelical meat-eaters who claim to be arguing from a logical point of view (horse-lovers being unashamedly emotional/experience/perception based) would do well to check the frequency with which they are using logical fallacies to bully AC and anyone who agrees with him (in addition to "Straw Man" and the Hitler one I have counted another 3 without really looking...) http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy

MissFM no one is stating that AC cannot have an opinion but simply that you and me and HER can post as much links as we like but that does not change my own or others personal opinions