European Meat Scandal page 2

[noodletoy]

But some animals, like dogs, we found them more useful to live with than to eat. Don't know for sure why. Maybe they were useful as working animals, or, I tend to feel, maybe the benefit to us was just in having something to love.

i think you're romancing the bone a bit here. if grok's choice was to starve or eat fido, am quite sure fido went on the fire.

plenty of asian cultures eat dog.

[s-piper]

i think you're romancing the bone a bit here. if grok's choice was to starve or eat fido, am quite sure fido went on the fire.

plenty of asian cultures eat dog.

I'm not romanticizing anything. Of course in times of scarcity any animals around were demoted from 'pets' to 'dinner.' Famine means suddenly not at all picky. There's numerous instances of people eating corpses in times of starvation!

However, dogs became widespread pets in almost every culture even the same Asian ones where they're also eaten. That's proof alone that not only most of the time there was plenty of food for humans without eating dog, but that they actually found reason to feed them! Yes, I'm aware they were probably originally just scavengers of our scraps, but they did become pets. In a basic sense dogs are parasites and ancient human beings were giant suckers for sharing precious and hard to comeby resources with them. That an unromantic enough interpretation?
There is, of course, the 'working dog' hypothesis that the protection, aid in hunting, etc. made it a mutalistic relationship rather than a parasitic one, but more and more that's just not adding up, and that the benefit to dogs in being around humans greatly outweighs the benefit to humans in keeping dogs.
That's why I think that it's more of our evolved aultrism. It helps us survive by helping each other, and the fact that it makes us feel good to do it is all the more evolutionarily reinforcing.

So which do you like better? That Grok had evolved to love, and thus help his family survive by keeping them together, and dogs were an accidential benificary, or that he was just too stupid to realize 'hey, instead of going into the woods to look for food why not just kill that thing gnawing the bones of last night's kill?'

[seaweed]

if grok's choice was to starve or eat fido, am quite sure fido went on the fire.

lol we would be starving rather than eat our fido or our horse around here. or the cat for that matter. i have no qualms about someone else eating horses or dogs that dont belong to me. it is kinda unnatural to eat a dog. as i say to anyone, if you've actually owned a decent hunting dog you would know how much more food you can get with one vs without one. so you really are shooting yourself in the foot eating fido. you would be better off eating one of the enemy. horses i am more realistic about as i know how much they cost to feed, how much care they take and how nasty some of them can be.

was not the scandal partly coz the romanians were culling wild horses and sending them off into the food chain?

dinohunter horse meat is relatively cheap if you get it from the petfood suppliers. i have never seen it sold for human consumption here. my main worry would be the meat withholding periods on the drenches.

[DinoHunter]

dinohunter horse meat is relatively cheap if you get it from the petfood suppliers. i have never seen it sold for human consumption here. my main worry would be the meat withholding periods on the drenches.

Ive never seen it sold for pet food here, the place I found it was selling for human consumption. They specilize in unusual meats

[seaweed]

you are much nearer to france and italy than we are. we're way down south but i have seen horse labelled as horse in petfood shops. it is also listed as an ingredient on some raw pet foods and i know this as i am not ALLOWED to buy it for the animals as it is horse LOL

here's a news article about horse meat here

Horsemeat served up in New Zealand - national | Stuff.co.nz

[cori93437]

What happened to the American horse sale market was that the sale of horses for meat was banned outright because of ignorant soft hearted do-gooders... that means for butcher for animal feed and glue.
It has never been legal to sell horse for human consumption here unfortunately(though there is a black market for it).

What that ban caused was people no longer able to care for horses to not even be able to sell their horses at all... horses were often abandoned to starve. Believe me... by the hundreds. The fact remained that horses have been over bred in this country for years, that older horses, horses of lower value and quality, and horses that people buy ignorant of care needs have gone to sales barns and to the pet food market in droves while no one particularly noticed, nor cared... except for a few "but they are pets, you can't do that" people who wanted it stopped, but had no plan for what to do with every, old, crippled, and just plain unwanted horse born every day.
The ban on horses for meat sales was an utter failure.

And honestly, why can't we eat them. It's good lean read meat. And it tastes really nice.
Saying it should only go to the pet market is a waste.
It's like telling me I shouldn't eat rabbits because those are cute and some people think they make nice pets.
Bollocks.

[Damiana]

I don't care, meat is meat, but I'd never buy ground meat because god knows what's in it (and I was right).

[Rip @ MIPWID]

I really like horses, but if I found I've unknowingly eaten them over the past year or so, it wouldn't bother me a bit. It's edible, after all.

[Andtckrtoo]

I couldn't eat horse or dog for that matter, heck I can't even eat goat or rabbit, and yes, I have been offered both. I have a problem eating animals that I have had a close personal relationships with. So sue me. And yes, I'd rather go veg then eat a friend.

That being said, I do eat plenty of other animals, including cute ones like deer. But, there are plenty of people who have valid reasons not to eat certain animals, and mislabeling meat is a major offense in my book. I don't care if it's beef, pork, or horse - if I don't want to eat an animal for certain reasons, I should not be tricked into eating it by mislabeling. That I do have a problem with.

[Warmbear]

I am at this moment making a pot full of horse meat stew. I got 10 lbs fresh from the butcher and it is much more flavourful than beef and at 3$/lb I cant complain. it makes wonderful steaks too.