Horse is falling off the menu in France

[delalluvia]

Ew-ww 


PARIS (Reuters) – Many people love horses and traditionally, many French people have loved them even more with a side of salad.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091215/od_nm/us_horse_meat

[Sheriff Roland]

What people choose to worry about ... Sheesh!

Back in the early 70's I remember horse being sold in Canadian grocery stores for the simple reason that it was cheaper. Tasted tougher than beef and it didn't take as a part of the Canadian diet.

Like most people I too eat a lot more chicken than I use to, however, my doctor has advised me I had a B-12 deficiency, from lack of red meat eating. Indeed I had unknowingly virtually stopped eating red meat.

Horse meat is a cheaper variety of red meat, a good cheaper sourse of B-12 than beef (that is not available in chicken or pork). I was also told that the body does not absorb B-12 as well from vegetable sources (I do enjoy my veggies). FYI, I now take B-12 injections once a month.

"It disturbs us that people continue to eat horses at all and we are going to go on campaigning until people stop eating it altogether," said Constance Cluset, a spokeswoman for the animal welfare group created by the former actress."

(This last comment is obviously stated by someone and for people who don't have a lot of respect for pluralism.)

Animal rights advocates and vegetarian terrorists, such as Brigitte Bardot are not respecting the natural need of humans ... that we naturally need both vegetables and meat in out diet. Horse is just another meat sourse, one I don't enjoy eating, (like I'm not partial to fish either) however, to have horse re-labeled as a companian animal instead of a sourse of food is wasteful.

Just my opinion, of course.

[delalluvia]

I guess...but if I accept horse, I guess I'll have to start accepting dog and cat meat as well. 

[Sheriff Roland]

I guess...but if I accept horse, I guess I'll have to start accepting dog and cat meat as well.  

And when horse is no longer on the menu, what next? Rabbit? Bear? Moose? Seal? - oh wait - they (Europeans) are already banning Seal - and the seal population of the North Atlantic has boomed, drastically reducing even further the availability of Atlantic fish.

Same problem happened when bear hunting was banned in recent years. Now there's a bear population boom and they are terrorizing Northern towns in search of food.

People should stop unscientifically messing with the order of things, based on emotional criteria.

As for dogs, I do believe they are a part of the Korean diet. Let be.

Just trying to be more pluralistic.

[delalluvia]

And when horse is no longer on the menu, what next? Rabbit? Bear? Moose? Seal? - oh wait - they (Europeans) are already banning Seal - and the seal population of the North Atlantic has boomed, drastically reducing even further the availability of Atlantic fish.

Oh, so it's the seal's fault the Atlantic has been overfished?   

Same problem happened when bear hunting was banned in recent years. Now there's a bear population boom and they are terrorizing Northern towns in search of food.

So it's the bear's fault that their prey is no longer around and they have to scrounge in trashcans?   

[Sheriff Roland]

Your arguments are un-scientific. Merely argumentative, IMO.

For one thing, I didn't suggest that the only reason there's a decline in fish availability in the North Atlantic is due to the seal overpopulation. I said it has exasperated the problem in spite of efforts to curb fishing quotas.

As for the bear population of the North, just how much of it's natural food stock (berries and fresh water fish) do you think the human population has removed? Sheesh!

http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=83

Black bears will eat almost anything available. Most of their food is plant material, especially in the late summer and autumn when berries and nuts are available. Favourite fruits include blueberries, buffalo berries, strawberries, elderberries, Saskatoon berries, black cherries, and apples. Acorns, hazelnuts, and beechnuts are other preferred foods. Insects such as ants rate high, and black bears will overturn logs, old stumps, and stones while hunting for food.

Fish, small mammals, and birds are sometimes on the black bear’s menu. In the spring some bears may prey upon newborn moose calves, deer fawns, caribou calves, or elk calves. Bears are also attracted by carrion, or dead animal flesh. People often think that bears are honey-lovers (perhaps because of the story of Winnie-the-Pooh). In fact, bears are much more interested in insects, and they are probably more attracted by the larvae than by the honey they find in the hives.
 

Your rebuttal was baseless.

[delalluvia]

Your arguments are un-scientific. Merely argumentative, IMO.

For one thing, I didn't suggest that the only reason there's a decline in fish availability in the North Atlantic is due to the seal overpopulation. I said it has exasperated the problem in spite of efforts to curb fishing quotas.

As for the bear population of the North, just how much of it's natural food stock (berries and fresh water fish) do you think the human population has removed? Sheesh!

http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=83

Black bears will eat almost anything available. Most of their food is plant material, especially in the late summer and autumn when berries and nuts are available. Favourite fruits include blueberries, buffalo berries, strawberries, elderberries, Saskatoon berries, black cherries, and apples. Acorns, hazelnuts, and beechnuts are other preferred foods. Insects such as ants rate high, and black bears will overturn logs, old stumps, and stones while hunting for food.

Fish, small mammals, and birds are sometimes on the black bear’s menu. In the spring some bears may prey upon newborn moose calves, deer fawns, caribou calves, or elk calves. Bears are also attracted by carrion, or dead animal flesh. People often think that bears are honey-lovers (perhaps because of the story of Winnie-the-Pooh). In fact, bears are much more interested in insects, and they are probably more attracted by the larvae than by the honey they find in the hives.
 

Your rebuttal was baseless.

My rebuttal was not baseless.  Considering the yearly tonnage of fishcatch from the Atlantic by several nations over the last century, the idea is laughable that seals have any sort of blame in the attempt to recover the fish populations.  The devastation of which of course, the U.S. Fisheries Department repeatedly warned the fishing industry, which they chose to ignore until the prime fishing areas were depleted and closed off.

It's hysterical that ANYone would put forth even the tiniest bit of blame of the absolute rape of the fishing areas on the growth of seal populations.

"All scientific efforts to find an effect of seal predation on Canadian groundfish stocks have failed to show any impact. Overfishing remains the only scientifically demonstrated conservation problem related to fish stock collapse." From a petition signd by 97 scientists from 15 countries at the 11th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals, Dec.1995
http://www.gan.ca/campaigns/seal+hunt/factsheets/seals+and+fisheries.en.html

As for the bear population of the North, just how much of it's natural food stock (berries and fresh water fish) do you think the human population has removed? Sheesh!

I don't know.  How much of that land has been paved over and made into subdivisions?  How much of it plowed under to raise sheep and cattle?  We're not picking the berries if that's what you thought I meant.

[serious crayons]

I guess...but if I accept horse, I guess I'll have to start accepting dog and cat meat as well. 

"Dogs are wonderful, and in many ways unique. But they are remarkably unremarkable in their intellectual and experiential capacities. Pigs are every bit as intelligent and feeling, by any sensible definition of the words. They can't hop into the back of a Volvo, but they can fetch, run and play, be mischievous, and reciprocate affection. So why don't they get to curl up by the fire? Why can't they at least be spared being tossed on the fire?

"Our taboo against dog eating says something about dogs and a great deal about us.

"The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses.

"The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows.

"The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs.

"While written in a much different context, George Orwell's words (from Animal Farm) apply here: 'All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.' The protective emphasis is not a law of nature; it comes from the stories we tell about nature."

-- Jonathan Safran Foer, Eating Animals.

[Brown Eyes]

I've mentioned on BetterMost before that, for a little over a year now, I've been eating a mainly vegetarian diet.  I cheat once in a while and on special occasions (like Thanksgiving) I'll still eat meat... I mean I don't consider it an absolute prohibition.  But, for instance, I don't think I've purchased meat at the grocery store once this whole year.

A variety of things caused me to do this, but the main thing / motivating factor (in addition to news about animal abuse against stock reported from time to time)  that sticks out in my mind was walking through a cow pasture with Lee on the side of Brokenback Mountain during the summer of 08.  Seeing those cows and their calves and being so close to them has impacted me more than I can describe or rationalize (I know it's not a logical thing).  And, it's not like that was the first time I ever encountered cows before... but this image always stops me in my tracks especially when it comes to consuming beef.  I didn't stop eating meat right away after that... but by the fall of 08 I'd stopped.  

It seems very hard to me to judge what animals are worthy of not being eaten.  That kind of judgment seems completely subjective and culturally based to me.  When I really think about it... eating a pig seems as disturbing as eating a dog, since apparently pigs are at least as intelligent as a dog, if not more so.

People need to make their own decisions about what they're comfortable with, what their health requires, etc.  I think it's important for people to be conscious of what they're doing when they decide to eat meat though.  It seems way too easy to think of meat as an abstraction... especially with the way it's packaged in modern grocery stores.

[Sheriff Roland]

In case I didn't make myself clear, it's not Beef or Horse or Dog or Seal or being a Carnivore or a Vegetarian that bothers me. It's the people who insist (like the Brigitte Bardot cults of the world) that others should think as they do.

I don't 'yuk' at the idea of eating a dog, or any meat. I don't like eating fish, don't mean I'm gonna try and discourage others from enjoying it.

I'm just tired of the sanctimonious amongst us who feel they have a monopoly on what is right for all.