Don't Eat Horses!

HORSE-EATING FOREIGNERS AIDED IN CONGRESS BY ONE TEXAS REPUBLICAN

By John Hanchette | Niagara Falls Reporter | 11.15.05

OLEAN -- Just before last weekend President George W. Bush signed without fanfare a $100 billion agricultural spending bill that contained many routine expenditures, but hid buried within a raging and painful controversy which can only grow in our American culture.

It is the incredibly widespread slaughter of horses for human consumption.

In the United States, we tend to look upon horses as unique creatures -- more as heroic companions than dumb draft animals or beasts of burden -- that helped us attain our 'manifest destiny' and national success.

The Pony Express. Mustangs. Cowboys. The Old West. Cattle drives. John Wayne. Faithful travelers. Willing conveyances. Friends of farmers and ranchers. Life savers, really. In some states, as recently as little more than a century ago, you could be hung for just stealing one.

When I explained to some of my college students that more than 65,000 horses are slaughtered each year in this supposedly humane nation of ours and shipped overseas so well-off Europeans and Japanese can eat them, the information produced disbelief. The students were offended and astounded, and a few driven to tears.

Mainly in France, Belgium and Japan -- but also in Holland, Italy, Switzerland and a few other countries that routinely look down their national noses at Americans as culturally crude barbarians -- diners who consider themselves sophisticated are paying the equivalent of $15 "

There's more in an email circulating around. If you would like a copy, contact Esther or Linda Harrison.