To think it's okay to shoot horses?

It seems like only yesterday there was the horse meat scandal.

I have a horse and when the time comes when he is no longer well enough to live a happy quality of life, yes, I will have him shot. It’s generally considered a kinder gentler way than to be euthanised by injection, especially for very large horses. It’s done very kindly and respectfully, usually by a specialist who is passionate about horse welfare. We put dogs and cats to sleep when their quality of life is no longer good due to age and poor health and it should be the same for horses and other large animals.

If your concern is about horses being used in the food chain, most horses, no matter how they are put to sleep, cannot enter the food chain. Many of the common equine medicines make them unsafe for human consumption. My horse literally has his passport (ID document, all horses must have one) stamped that he cannot enter the food chain ever. This is due to medication he took when I had him castrated as a baby. Most horses will have this medication in their lifetimes unless raised specifically for meat.

I think it's possible to farm and consume the animals whose needs can be met in a farm environment.

We can keep herd/flock animals like sheep and cattle and (to a lesser extent, it can be done but its not so cost effective) pigs in this way.

Horses, yep, we can keep them in herds and meet their needs, no problem with that either. I do have a problem with horses bred for pet/work, that then end up in the slaughter chain, thats a huge welfare issue most of the time.

Dogs - we cannot farm dogs in a way that meets their needs, and is also cost effective for meat production. Dogs have a need to be with humans, and whilst they are social animals that social nature is more geared to living with humans than it is with other dogs. If you try to keep dogs in large herds/flocks, you will get some severe stress and fighting.

Ditto cats.

Insects - we could farm insects WAY more effectively with far fewer welfare issues because the insects we would farm are designed to live in large colonies, for a short time, put on weight rapidly, and are a higher percentage of protein and fat to waste than cows or sheep.

We don’t eat carnivores like cats or dogs mainly because of the risk of disease from what they may have eaten. Herbivores are cheaper to raise.
Horses are a perfectly viable food source imo.
Not all animals eat rubbish . Our cattle are grass fed and free to roam when the weather is suitable.
I agree that people eat too much factory farmed ( usually chicken) meat. Meat should be locally sourced and of a high quality and eaten sparingly.

Yes and so much of it makes sense. Halal and Kosher slaughter both require that the animal is alive at the moment of slaughter. This protects people from eating dead things they find about the place that might be diseased or rotten, which would have been a useful prohibition back in the day.

Agreed, I've seen horses get dangerous because the wrong amount of sedative was administered.
As a horse owner (including ex-racers) I would always choose that method over injection.
A 600kg animal thrashing around is a danger to everyone and it's highly distressing.

I’m agree, to me it isn’t the method of shooting so much as the reason. Killing an animal that is healthy and not suffering unduly because it is no longer useful or entertaining is what I think is cruel. Euthanasia is like killing for food, an acceptable reason to kill. No matter the valid reason, the method should be the most humane available- which I agree we need to improve.

@WalkDontWalk
You are correct about dogs and horses- domesticated animals as a whole- that there is no culinary or evolutionary reason not to eat them.

But I think you might find it interesting, or might already know that that there is an evolutionary reason for the low number of food animals in each cultural setting, as a smaller subset of a limited number of animals that we domesticate.

Each society has a low number of domesticated species because our primary predator- microbes(viruses,bacteria, prions) - over time will expand to new species when they live consistently in close contact with each other.

So if we have a high number of animal species we live with, we become more vulnerable to epidemics and pandemics. Swine flu, bird flu, mad cow, rabies, HIV, salmonella etc are all examples of deadly microbial infections that mutated from infecting only a domesticated animal to also being able to infect, sicken, and kill humans.

Evolutionarily we are more successful if we don’t domesticate and/or eat all the varieties of animal in our local habitat (or shipped in from elsewhere).

Some cultural restriction differences might be evolutionary for a certain geographic location. For example, the French can safely eat snails without catching brain worms parasites because those parasites didn’t exist in Northern Europe but were in SE Asia. However due to climate change and globalisation, these parasites have spread massively and can be found as far West and North as the UK today which is why the French now only sell and eat professionally farmed snails so that this pathogen is kept out of the food chain.

In the Middle East, religious bans on eating pigs are for the same sort of reason- to avoid parasites that will infect humans if undercooked meat is eaten from an infected pig. Many seemingly silly religious restrictions actually originated before the religion itself. It just got codified and made into tradition (and a morality attached to it) that was then adopted by religious leaders over thousands of years.

I had my horse bolted. It's like a gun with a bolt inside. It is fast... Instantaneous. If the horse is badly injured or cast in a field it is often the quickest way to end suffering.

My mare was old, very old. It just felt like her whole presence was snatched away.

A few months later one of my friends horses developed a severe autoimmune disease. There's no cure. So eventually she had to have him out down. She chose the vet.

Then horse was distressed. Panicked. It was distressing to watch. He was a really big horse and he went down hard then he fought it. His knees got grazed up. It was absolutely fucking horrible.

So yeah, I know shooting source harsh but it can be better.

Would it be possible to share a bit more about this footage, where/when did this occur, name of the horse (records of all UK racehorses publically accessible)? I don't wish to come across as an apologist for the racing industry, it has a lot to answer to, but this just doesn't sound right to me (if it was UK, can't speak for everywhere in the world that has racing). If the horse was previously successful there's no way one lost race knocked enough off his value to make him only worth meat money, unless he'd also picked up a significant injury in the course of losing the race, in which case protocol is also either to humanely euthanize on track if non-survivable, or to sedate/ give pain relief and transport to an equine hospital for further assessment (and possible euthanasia there if not fixable), neither of which is great but nor is it quite the same as being transported to the glue factory for losing a race...

@DysgraphiaQueen @Angels1111

1st "I've always been vegetarian but I'm not sanctimonious about it. "

Well first of all the fact your posting this says otherwise.

SANCTIMONY - the action or practice of acting as if one were morally superior to other people.

Where's the sanctimony in this post? I can't see any pretension to moral superiority. Quite the opposite actually. The whole tone is 'I'm only veggie because that's how I was brought up...if I hadn't been, I might well eat meat'.

The question's a good one, OP. Human beings are incredibly picky about what animals they eat. In the west, it comes down to about five quadrupeds and a couple of birds. I mean, I'm a meat eater, but I can't remember the last time I ate anything other than chicken, cow, pig or sheep.

In short - there's no culinary reason not to eat horses or dogs. No evolutionary reason either. So it's cultural. Which doesn't answer your question at all.

I have a theory about this narrowness of choice, actually. If I get time, I'll elucidate

Imo any horses that fall at the track and are shot are the lucky ones. I have seen footage of a previously prestigious race horse lose a race and be transported to a facility and shot for dog meat..
Horses are treated just as violently as other animals in the food chain
*vegetarian and trying to be vegan..

In most European countries it's considered perfectly acceptable to eat horse.

Personally I think there's a big difference between raising an animal and killing it to eat, and raising an animal for entertainment and then shooting it when it doesn't perform to your liking.

Great dystopia reference! However, cannibalism leads to the eaters getting CRJ aka “mad cow disease”

Could always get your protein from Soylent Green and solve so many MN dilemmas in one fell swoop.

The answer to all your whys are culture. Different cultures have different values and ‘rules’ that govern its adherents’ relationship with animals and food. But each culture is not an unchanging monolith. There is always constant change in cultural values and ‘rules’ over time and there is always dissent- those who do not agree and act (through activism) for change.

I personally think horse racing is animal abuse and shooting them when they can no longer race due to most often injury and less often age is also cruel. It is not at all like raising livestock for food because there is no reason to kill the horse unless it is a mercy killing due to immediate and irreparable injury that will cause suffering and death is imminent anyway.

As humans we are biologically evolved to eat meat, plants and fungi. We are part of the ecosystem as one of many apex predators. It is hubris to think we should or can detach ourselves en masse as a species from our place in the natural food chain. It would be a mistake to cut out any one of these three food sources, the ecosystem would collapse just like if you sawed off the leg of a stool. We can’t grow crops indefinitely with artificial fertilisers- the land must be be renewed by the dung of grazing livestock. And livestock need plants that are not just crops we grow for feed to survive. Many meadow “weeds” have viral minerals and vitamins you can’t get. To expect livestock to thrive on feed we grow is like expecting humans to thrive on wheat bread alone as their only plant based food source - no vegetables, no other grains, no nuts, no fruits,,,.

None of this doesn’t mean we should not raise and kill animals humanely and with a moral purpose. Killing an animal for food is morally ok in my book. Killing an animal to save money because it’s no longer “useful” is not ok in my book.

useful= meaning whatever use other than food you keep the animal for- race horse, work horse, police/drug sniffer dog, pet, rat catcher, service animal, carrier pigeon,..etc. once these animals can no longer be useful but can still live out their lives, we owe it to them to care for them for their natural lifespan in return for the service they provided to us.

It really depends on the circumstances. Taking a shot gun down to your local pony club and and taking pot shots at the horses is not ok. If it was breed for meat or reached the end of its useful life it is ok.

If a horse is PTS by injection, as pet dogs and cats are, they can't enter the food chain. A friend's horse was shot and went to feed large carnivores at the local zoo.

No.

I don't think we tend to eat carnivores so much in the west. So dogs and cats are generally off the menu. I remember once something about an artic expedition where they ate the dogs because they were starving and poisoned themselves, maybe something about dog livers being very high in a particular chemical.

In places where food is shorter the diet is a lot more varied by necessity. So its not surprising that in some countries where 10s of millions of people have starved to death within living memory that they eat a very wide variety of different food types and a lot of stranger food (to us) is considered a delicacy.

I have eaten a lot of weird stuff and my general conclusion is most of it is not too bad. Because if it was, people wouldn't eat it (or at least wouldn't eat it today). And you can eat almost everything, plant and animal that is alive, apart from stuff that is obviously poisonous.

Edit : Some stuff might have very low nutritional value though. eg grass.

I don’t eat meat, but if I did, I would eat horse, dog etc.
it chills me how we can ‘humanise’ some animals as pets (I have pets) and ‘dehumanise’ others to be part of the food chain. They are all animals.

and for those saying it is wrong to kill animals for entertainment but okay to kill them for meat - imo if you’re killing for meat, that IS for your entertainment. It is unnecessary, and to provide your enjoyment. No other reason in developed western culture.

I definitely indirectly abuse animals, wildlife and environment with my western lifestyle. We all do.

Yes it's a dilemma I agree. I am not sure what the 'correct' thing to do is. I think I need to start making more of an effort to eat non ultra processed food which might have less of an impact.

I don't know your friends. I just know that I shop at local butchers and fishmongers who can tell me where my meat and fish come from.

I guess from a philosophical point of view, you’re right OP.

I’m a meat eater. I have no ethical problem with that. Our biology has evolved from eating meat. However, I have significant ethical issues with how those animals are kept and slaughtered - so much so that I am thinking of becoming vegetarian as it becomes harder and harder to obtain meat that’s been certified as raised and killed as humanely as possible. I wish the food industry would be properly taken to task for causing unnecessary suffering. It’s perfectly possible to produce meat and still allow those animals a good life. Just more expensive.

Horse is eaten in many places but not necessarily the kind used for racing, I’d have to look that up. I personally think it is ok to shoot an injured or beyond capable of racing horse as long as it is then used at a zoo for instance that requires meat for their animals, resources shouldn’t be wasted.