http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/columnists/story.html?id=b29504ff-3a67-4bd3-9508-ea5cc0db888d
Go ahead. Take a bite
Robert Fulford, National Post
Published: Saturday, September 08, 2007

One day in the middle of the last century, the tabloids of Britain filled their pages with a scandal involving horses. They reported that honest horses, born and bred in England, were being slaughtered and transported across the Channel to be eaten by the French!

Everyone in England, so far as newspaper readers could tell, considered this monstrous. I recalled that sensation many years later when, visiting Padua in northern Italy, I ordered carne di cavallo. The waitress assumed I was on the point of making a blunder. "You do know," she asked, "that is horse?"

It was, in fact, the equine equivalent of porterhouse steak, and tasty too. She couldn't believe that someone speaking English would actually choose to eat part of a horse.
In fact, at a French restaurant in Toronto, a couple of years ago, I several times enjoyed cheval -- but covertly. It did not appear on the menu and patrons had to be informed by friends that it might be available. The owner presumably feared that horse lovers would picket his restaurant if they saw their favourite animal on the bill of fare. I know about a French-born Toronto mother who put horsemeat sandwiches in her daughter's school lunch. Wisely, the child told friends it was beef. She feared the disapproval of fellow students.

These days, England has no law against horsemeat but English prejudice remains invincible. In London last May, loonies from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) dumped a ton of manure at Gordon Ram-say's restaurant because he had the effrontery to demonstrate horsemeat preparation on his TV show. Defending this ugly and mean-spirited demonstration, the PETA ringleader asked: "Will it be a family dog next?"
In fact, the meat on the TV show was from horses bred for human consumption.

Napoleon's army ate horse, and later in the 19th century it became a standard part of French cuisine. But spoilsports are always with us. In recent times, Brigitte Bardot, that global pest, has tried to make horsemeat as unfashionable as the fur of baby seals.

There's no reason to quarrel with those who avoid horse for religious reasons or those who choose to eat no meat at all. Otherwise, the aversion to horsemeat is a judgement based on neither reason nor experience, a form of prejudice so pure it deserves to be studied in a lab. Horse is slightly sweeter than beef, lower in fat and higher in protein, both satisfying and healthy. So what in the world turns people against it?
Organizations created exclusively to save horses from the abattoir now flourish in several countries. Ask their members what's wrong with horsemeat and they come up with nothing better than "Doesn't seem quite right to me." But their lack of an argument doesn't keep them from imposing their silliness on the rest of us. The Humane Society of the United States, the Animal Welfare Institute and the Doris Day Animal League have almost entirely succeeded in banning the processing and sale of horsemeat in the United States. A New Zealand publication, Horse Talk: Equine News and Views, defines these activists as "slaughter opponents." North Forty News of Colorado has solemnly reported the existence of horse-rescue facilities that place some animals with adoptive families, others in foster care.
Canada has not escaped this madness. On Tuesday, a Globe and Mail story ("Will Canadians stomach a horsemeat industry?") reported that "horse advocates" were angry that a firm called Natural Valley Farms has developed a horse abattoir near Neudorf, Sask. -- and with a federal licence! Shelley Grainger of the Canadian Horse Defense Coalition wants horse slaughter outlawed in Canada on the ground that, well, it's repugnant, since horses are commonly "regarded more as pets and sporting animals than livestock."
The Canadian industry (six abattoirs in all) grosses $60-million a year, mostly through exports to France, Japan, Mexico and Switzerland.
Predictably, the Globe (never saw a pressure group it didn't love) presented this nonsense from the horse-advocate standpoint and depicted the producers as nervous and defensive, obviously up to no good.

The story quoted a farmer: "Those poor, poor horses."

We are dealing here with what Thomas Carlyle called, in another connection, "hollow fantastic sentimentalities." The attitude of PETA & Co. goes far beyond humane treatment of animals and falls into a swamp of mawkishness. Horse advocates, having too much time on their hands, search for new ways to interfere in the lawful activities of others, displaying what H.L. Mencken said of puritans -- a deep fear that somewhere someone is doing something enjoyable.