To think it's okay to shoot horses?

[Angels1111]

I've always been vegetarian but I'm not sanctimonious about it. The way I see it, as my family was vegetarian it wasn't a conscious choice I made. Who knows what I'd be doing if I had been born into a family eating meat and two veg every day. I also have huge space to improve my environmental footprint...the clothes I wear have probably been stitched by kids working long hours, I don't always remember to take a bag with me to the shops, quite a lot of my diet is imported...etc..
My point is, unless we're living off the land and making our own clothes we're all affecting the environment and we can all improve where we can reduce our impact on it.

All that to say....I was watching a show with some friends about how race horses, once past their point of use, are often shot. This was accompanied by protests of "that's so sad, so cruel" etc.

I wondered how it's any different to raising a pig for food and killing it once it's fat enough. Or a chicken for eggs and killing it once it doesn't lay eggs. To me, the horse may even have had a better life than animals raised for meat, since there is an onus on the owner to make sure it's well fed and kept healthy.

Of course, ideally I'd like the horse to live out it's natural life in retirement. I'd like all animals to live out their natural lives. But I can see why that might not be feasible for the owner.

I really don't understand why some animals are okay to eat, but others aren't. Why is okay to eat pig but not dog? Why chicken but not parrot? Why cow but not horse?

Please could you educate me?

Some places do eat dogs, others horses. Over time I suppose people have cultivated whichever animals they feel give them the most efficient return on the investment of raising them.

As for chickens and parrots, they are built very differently. Ignoring issues of selective breeding, there's not really a lot of meat on a parrot.

Meat is kind of a different issue to shooting horses though, especially the specific of race horses. I think horse racing is cruel even if they get to live their natural lives afterwards.

We've had a very long relationship with horses and dogs, so are particularly protective over them. I've lived in a country where they eat all animals. There was a part of a market where you could buy dog to eat as well as restaurants. You could also buy snake, shark and insects.

I've been vegetarian for decades and see all animals as the same; they're all entitled to be treated well and live their lives.

Horses are pets. Cattle and pigs obviously can be pets too, but it’s not as common for them to be.

Wouldn't you have to be vegan then? Milk products and eggs still involve using the animals commercially, often removing baby animals from mothers at birth, making them produce milk for longer than the natural cycle, hooking them up to machines to extract that milk.

What animals people tend to eat and not eat, feel comfortable eating and would feel uncomfortable eating, what is "okay" and what is not, is dependent on the culture, environment and history.

Could go through all animals and state the reasons relevant to our culture/environment/history but would take ages. Horses worked for us, as did dogs, pet cats were too exotic/special (in the UK) to eat (ones that weren't DID get hunted to near extinction, we don't have many of our small wildcats left) and then they worked for us too. So on, so forth.

It's not that deep really.

... there's not really a lot of meat on a parrot.

Now there's a sentence I never thought I'd read!

😄

Horses, dogs and cats have worked alongside humans for thousands of years. Particularly in our part of the world. It’s changed how we think about them, and they are useful to us as live animals. We don’t have the same relationship/use for animals that are reared for meat.

When you have a horse humanely destroyed for whatever purpose It cannot go into the food chain if it has been taking certain medications ( even for pet/dog food) or has had certain vaccinations.

Cats? If you've managed to get a cat working could you let me know how cos my cats are lazy buggers who expect high levels of service from the humans they keep.

Exploitation of animals is wrong, whatever the species.

We rehome commercial chickens. Billions of chickens worldwide each year have awful lives and deaths, and most people don't care, yet hens have great individual personalities and so enjoy doing the natural behaviours which many don't get to experience in factory farms.

As a vegetarian (by choice, not upbrnging) i don't see any difference between eating a dog or a cow. All animals feel fear, pain and experience stress in bad conditions.

1st "I've always been vegetarian but I'm not sanctimonious about it. "
Well first of all the fact your posting this says otherwise.

2nd. "really don't understand why some animals are okay to eat, but others aren't"
I don't understand why you included above the part about your friends being sad about a race horse being shot? They were sad about they had sympathy for a working animal being killed as soon as it was no longer useful. No one said anything about breeding for eating.

Why cannot people have sympathy for both I have some sympathy for food reared animals and I hope they were treated right before slaughter. But at the end of the day that is how the world works carnivores and omnivores eats other species, why should humans be no different. it does not mean we have no feelings for them, they were consumed and killed to feed ourselves.

Thing with vegans/many vegetarians many have a hatred of the natural world and some warped ideology, that human nature should be excluded from nature and the natural order that has been around billions of years before humans is some how wrong.

In nature the strong kill and consume the weak, animals suffer in their billions daily as other creatures battle with poison, claws, teeth, ect. that's just Nature its incredibly violent and harsh.

Some people have a bond with certain species that like, care for, keep than others, why should they not be upset when those particular ones are harmed. Your post makes zero sense.

Cows too in some places, that's very much "don't bite the hand that feeds you". The cow provides daily milk, butter, yogurt etc

Was going to say this, my horses are signed out of the food chain.

Compared to the rest of their life, the euthanasia at the end might be the kindest bit for race horses.

Mine were remarkably good mousers.

Horse meat was eaten a lot in this country, up to the 50s, especially if you think how many were in use for transport etc.

Mine too

Mine has brought home a couple of live snakes. Was proud of himself but it definitely wasn't the work I was hoping for from him.
In fact virtually everything he caught was brought in alive and left for us to deal with.

Horse racing is cruel, but so is factory farming, and stepping back from cultural reasons I didn't understand why the first is not okay but the second is.

There is a slight difference for me in that racehorses are kept solely for human entertainment so perhaps more of an onus to not treat them cruelly, whereas as an omnivorous animal, I do not have a moral issue eating animals - it’s our nature - as long as they’re treated humanely while alive.

I get that horses are pets, but I don't get why it's okay to be cruel to the animal that is not a pet but not to the animal that is a pet.

O/T but your post without the quote at the top made a rather bizarre reply to the abilities of race horses.

Horses might be good mousers of course.

I didn't realise what incredible mousers they were until one needed an X-ray and the vet said his entire digestive tract had mouse bones in it (they showed up white on his hip x-ray).

We have bins of animal feed in a shed. The cats keeps the rodent population to a minimum.

I disagree that vegans think humans should be excluded from nature. The one you're typing to right now, at least, would have no problem eating animals if that was the only thing to eat and if they were living out their natural life and I needed to pop to the stream and catch a fish for something to eat. We have a choice, and we're choosing to eat flesh but hemming animals into tiny spaces and feeding them rubbish to grow as quickly as possible so that we can eat them, and there is nothing "natural" about that.
If we take a step back from our history with animals, it seems somewhat arbitrary to think one is far too cute to eat whilst another one is fair game. To me you either eat them all or you don't.