Top Chef Canada Featuring Horse Meat Dishes

Much to the horror of horse lovers across the world, the top horse buzz on Facebook today is reading about the future May 16th 2011 episode of "Top Chef Canada" that will feature French dishes made from horse meat. A Facebook page titled "Boycott Top Chef - Protect Horses" already has almost 2000 likes in just a few hours. The Top Chef Canada Facebook page is begging people to stop their attacks to each other as debates on eating horse meat rage on their Facebook wall. Horse Industry leaders are asking horse lovers across the world to boycott Food Network and start an email campaign to stop the airing of the episode

While most of us refuse to eat horse meat simply out of respect for the horse, there are many other reasons why horse meat is not safe for humans to eat.

Top Reasons You Shouldn't Eat Horse meat

1. Race horses such as Thoroughbreds are especially at risk to ship to slaughter once they can no longer race. Most of these race horses are injected with pain killers such as phenylbutazone (aka "bute") just minutes or hours before shipping to slaughter. The American Horse meat website states "Phneylbutazone is not approved for human use as it previously caused severe reactions in humans when used as a pain killer."

2. Current controls such as the EDU paperwork to stop horses that have ingested these pain killers and other horse vaccines and medicines from being slaughtered, are failing, which makes much of the horse meat offered for sale, unfit for human consumption. Many unscrupulous horse meat dealers will falsify the papers in order to collect their money.

3. Due to horse slaughter being made illegal in the United States, most horses are now shipped to Canada and Mexico to be slaughtered. In order to enable sick and lame horses to make the long drive, most are injected with various painkillers and medicines to make the trip.

Even people that do not own or love horses are generally horrified by the thought of eating horse meat. Horses have a long history of fighting wars side by side with their owners and settling new frontiers. For most people eating horse meat is as abhorrent as eating the family dog.

I suspect Food Network will rue the day they decided to produce such a controversial episode. Hell has no fury like that of a dedicated horse lover.


American Horsemeat: Is Horse Meat Safe to Eat from America, Canada and Mexico?

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