Why not? Because...

[altivo]

Over on LJ, jm_horse asks Why are most horse furs bothered about people eating horse meat? Since I put some thought into a response, I'll repost it here:

Your mention of it being "akin" to cannibalism is somewhat on the mark though not precise enough for me.

While I carry the burden of what most would consider an excessive reverence for animal life and particularly mammals, I do think it is clear that not all animals are equal in this respect. I feel much less concern over chickens and turkeys, for instance, though I do think they should be treated with some respect and not kept in tiny cages for their entire lives.

Certain animals, however, are more than "just animals." This comes from living in close enough association with them to have learned some of their communication modes and to have seen them as intelligent and emotional creatures, rather than just interesting automata. Most humans have a strong aversion (with cultural exceptions of course, but most) to eating dogs and cats. I believe this is because of the close personal associations and empathies we acquire with daily contact. Those of us who live close to the horse view him in the same light. My horses are friends and companions. They have feelings, humor, affection, and at least limited rational thought processes. They are quite intelligent within the limits of their needs. The very idea of eating one of them is completely unacceptable.

Interestingly enough, it takes more than just familiarity and association to bring this feeling forth. I do not have the same feeling for the sheep in my care, nor for the ducks (though I don't care to eat either one, the reasons are quite different.)

My grandmother, who was a farm woman and a professional butcher in her time, used to say that you should never give a name to anything you were planning to eat. This sums it up fairly well. Horses have names. They are people to me, individuals entitled to their natural lifespan (which is substantial, up to 40 years or more under ideal conditions.) I would no more eat a horse than I would eat my sibling. And I am inclined to fight just as hard against someone else who wants to eat horses or sell them to slaughter for meat as I would fight someone who wanted to do that with my siblings.

I am not able to view animals in the impersonal manner with which a carnivore must see them. It goes against my nature. My horse comes to me willingly, and expresses affection and trust. How could I betray her in that way? By extension, how could I justify any similar betrayal by anyone else?

Other than that, we had a fairly relaxed day. The weather is beautiful except for all the mosquitoes lingering after so much rain. Tess went out, I wasted too much time twisting the Alpha into the latest configuration of stuff recommended by HP. They seem to be wrong about something, though. They have dropped support for the Mozilla web browser in favor of a port of the Seamonkey browser. So I upgraded to Seamonkey, only to find that it wants a huge amount of resources, runs slow, and cannot load the Java plugin for some reason. After exhausting all the troubleshooting tips they provided (not that many,) I backed down to Mozilla, where Java works fine.

On the whole, the Alphas are running well now. It has only taken me about a year to get VMS beaten into shape. They even talk to one another and share applications and windows over the net. Of course, having achieved this, I find that HP has just announced the release of OpenVMS 8.4, an upgrade. Probably won't be available to hobbyists for a while, though, thank goodness.

Gary stopped at the Marengo library, our local public library, this morning. He was looking for new audiobooks but found none. I went in with him and just passing by the shelf found two documentaries I couldn't pass up. A history of Werewolves (?!) and a PBS special on the lighthouses around Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. So I actually used my Marengo library card for the first time in several years. (Since I work at a larger library and can borrow there, I rarely go into the Marengo one.)

Comments

[schnee]

You've got a good point there when you note that it's about companionship. Pigs are probably of a comparable intelligence to dogs, so it can't be because of that that the former are considered OK to eat but the latter are not (in our culture), and horses are herbivores just like e.g. cows, so it can't be that, either. However, we tend to have more personal relationships with dogs or horses — as exemplified by giving names to them, for instance.

In the case of dogs at least, I'd also argue that dogs have been selectively bred to socialize with humans so extensively that raising them for their meat, without allowing much in the way of actual social contact, could not possibly be humane.

I'm less sure about other animals in that regard, but I see where you're coming from, and I agree, too, although I'm finding it difficult to find a bulletproof justification for it that goes beyond "it's a cultural issue" (which is what "these animals are (typically) companions rather than livestock" boils down to, of course). I've struggled with this before, but I haven't been able to come to a satisfactory conclusion yet.

As for horse meat as such, it's very rare in Germany, but it does exist; it's not as much of a social taboo as it is in the USA from what I know.

[altivo]

This is actually a recurring topic in my journals. The earliest mention of it that I can find took place in 2004 and can still be read here:

http://altivo.dreamwidth.org/87291.html

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

My observation is that if another living thing is good for more than providing food or becoming food, taboos tend to form when it comes to treating it as food. If it's worth forming a relationship with an animal to train it to do something more useful, it's wasteful to then view it as food. The more useful and beneficial the symbiosis with an animal is within a culture, the more likely the culture is going to view the consumption of it as a taboo.

[altivo]

This would seem rational enough, and yet European and Asian cultures that depended heavily on the horse until quite recently still have no taboo against eating him.

Otherwise, though, you seem to be correct. I don't think the Mongols ate their horses, though they used them for everything else. The native Americans, many of whom did eat dogs, valued horses much too highly to eat them.

On the other hoof, though, in cultures and times where the ox was a major beast of burden he was still also food. It seems more complex than that.

Does anyone eat donkeys or burros except in cases of famine and starvation? What about zebras? Did the Greeks or Persians eat horses? I hadn't thought of this until now, but the Bible and Koran consider the horse unfit for use as food, which may be a factor as well. Though swine are also in that position and they are widely eaten in cultures with Judeo-Christian history...

[kakoukorakos.livejournal.com]

The ox is merely a beast of burden, hardly a notch above any other consumable. The relationship humans have had with equines (mostly high-speed, long-distance travel compared to walking or running) and some cultures formed with dogs (herding, hunting, guarding, etc.) have made them much closer to symbiotes in their relationship with humans. They provide us with far more than dumb, brute strength.

I do not believe that the Greeks, Persians, or Romans ate equines. That doesn't necessarily mean it was taboo, but as a matter of pragmatism, value, and pride. It was much easier for them to raise smaller animals such as goats for meat, and game meat was also desirable, since it didn't require months or years of one's own resources be invested in it, just hours of time.

India is one major exception that reveres cattle, they seemed to have formed more interesting value judgements regarding them, including deification. Indigenous Americans and primitive European peoples did kill many wild horses for food, until they realized there was a more mutually beneficial relationship they could form with them. Most of the cultures that eat dogs and cats seem to have failed to form such relationships with them; they didn't breed them for specialized tasks, they often seem to be more pests than anything, not moving much beyond the stage that early canine scavengers took on, where they'd grab scraps and probably occasionally would serve as a meal for an impoverished and opportunistic human.