Why Not?

This horse meat issue is rather interesting to me. An awful lot of people are concerned about unwittingly eating horsemeat due to lax practices. I guess that this has actually happened to someone somewhere. I know they found traces of horse meat in some meatballs meant for IKEA's stores in several European countries. I don't know if it's happened here in America or not. I can appreciate the worries to an extent.

I wouldn't want to eat horse thinking I was getting cow any more than I would want to eat one fish while thinking I was eating another, which happens all too often. The identification end of this controversy is not where you get a quarrel from me. I just wonder what the problem is with horse meat. It's taboo not because it's unsafe meat to eat or because it's illegal. In fact it became legal in the US just a couple of years ago. It's been slow to catch on.

The horse evidently falls into that category of pets that we will not consider eating, although I would guess few Americans have a horse or ever have. There was a time when more people had them, but those days surely ended with the car. We use the car for travel and we don't eat it, so why can't we start eating the horse? I guess we are still too close to it, and could only entertain the idea in the event of the worst possible need.

I could just about imagine eating horse meat. I would sooner have cow or one of the other more conventional animals, I'll grant you that. After the cow, the pig, the fish and the various birds though, why should I not have the horse? Maybe the meat is not the most delicious, and if that's the case, then why ever eat it, but how am I to know? Maybe they ought to stop depicting the horse as they do in the media. Stop worrying about whether we glamorize the cigarette or the gun, Hollywood! You just make sure that you stop doing so for the horse.