Clovis arrowheads, very effective against unarmed horses

Eating horses is very American. Horses were common across North America for millions of years until the arrival of the Clovis people. They didn't see the folly of eating horses, I bet if they could see into the future they would have changed their minds, and their descendants would still be in charge of their own lands today rather than have then overrun by Europeans. In contrast European peoples developed a taboo about eating horses, probably because they were so valuable economically and militarily. Once a people is settled and farming eating an animal doesn't lead to its loss, it leads to its proliferation. Cows are sacred in India because they are so valuable, but America has more cows than India despite eating them at every opportunity!

If you like horses you should want to see them farmed. A horsemeat industry increases the value of horses, they become more than just rivals for pasture, grazing or land. If you really like horses and want to see more of them you should promote the eating of horse meat, especially as a high quality, high price gourmet meat. Range bred wild mustang steaks. That will ensure there are wild horses for people to watch and enjoy. And it will ensure that land is allocated for them to enjoy. A good price for a healthy horse carcass also ensures that people with horses they can't afford to care for can find a willing buyer.

Have you got any recipes?

First of all how dare you assume I'm American?

Secondly I don't care about horses any more than any animal. Why should I? What is so special about horses? The answer is, now, they are not special. They used to be special. They were valuable to your chieftains, liege lords and other oppressors. Your horses were vital for their cavalry. They wanted you to ensure you kept your horses so they could call upon them in the time of their need, rather than you eating them in the time of your need.

Horses were the basis of military power for all but 90 of the last 5,000 years. Horses shaped human destiny. The people who developed cavalry as a weapon of war dominated the world. Most of the languages of Europe and South Western Asia come from a common heritage, the tribes who first put the horse into battle. The Spanish conquered the Americas because of that same power, a few hundred men with horses could defeat armies of tens of thousands.

The taboo on eating horses is not unique to the Celts. The Anglo Saxons also cared greatly for their horses. Two great warlords of Saxon times who helped remove the Celts from Southern Britain (ethnic cleansing) and create England were called Hengist and Horsa, both names mean horse.

Your attitude to horses is irrational. It is based on outmoded logic. It has outlived its usefulness, but even when it was useful it was useful to the elites, the oppressors and the tyrants, not the bulk of the people. How many families have starved while the carcasses of horses rotted in the soil outside their hovels? Of course it isn't wise to slaughter your horses for food when you need them to work, but it is not necessary to have a food taboo to see the wisdom of that restraint. You don't sell your cow for a handful of beans either, that is common folk wisdom. But the warlords didn't care if you ate your cow, it was your horse they wanted spared, so they promoted the taboo on eating horses.

You are quite wrong about the idea that people don't eat named animals. There are several pieces of meat in my mother's freezer with the names of animals on the label. When you are a poor farmer you don't have enough of anything not to give it a name.

America was full of horses until the first Americans came and ate them. Their descendants were then at a great disadvantage when they later needed animals to domesticate, an ideal candidate species had been scoffed down at one sitting. When Europeans arrived they had cavalry, and this gave them a huge advantage. Well fed and trained troops with state of the art weapons and horses are very hard to defeat, as Custer later found. The native Americans could clearly see how useful horses were, as both mounts for transport and food. There is nothing un-American about having your horse and eating it too.

The English language is very ambiguous, it's often difficult to know whether one is included in "we" or "our". It's a problem we (English users) have to live with.

I think your project is very much against the best American traditions of multiculturalism, capitalism, pluralism and tolerance. If people want to give horses special status that is surely their choice, as is their choice to treat them just the same as any other domesticated mammal. Horses deserve to be protected by law from cruelty in husbandry and slaughter, but no more or less than cattle, sheep or pigs.

If people want to keep pot-bellied pigs as housepets then they are unlikely to want to barbecue them and they may decide to lay restrictions on who they sell them to so that other people do not eat them either. If horse owners want to do that then they are quite at liberty to do so. But to make the slaughter of horses illegal is imposing your ill-founded moral standards onto other people in an unjustified way. It is illiberal and illogical.

If you don't want to eat your horses don't eat them but don't expect everybody to cheer when you attempt to impose your idea of morality onto other people who have different standards. There is no reason to treat horses any differently to cattle. Treat them humanely, minimize their suffering and slaughter them swiftly and painlessly before hanging up the limbs to age to produce tender cuts of meat. Much American land is unfit for any arable crops, ranching wild horses for meat makes excellent use of such land and keeps it looking beautiful while providing wealth and employment in both farming and tourism. For the horses the choice isn't between running free and being slaughtered, it is between being slaughtered after running free or never being allowed to run free at all.

Many parts of my country (England) are kept looking beautiful by this method, horses run free over them and end up on the dinner tables of the French, but without that market there would be no place for wild ponies, sheep would be kept there instead and the landscape would be so much the poorer as a result. We don't eat horses, but we allow the trade, it would be illiberal, un-British, to ban it for no good reason. An outmoded food taboo is no good reason.

Honouring heritage is one side of it, imposing majority cultural standards as if they are universal values is another. I have no doubt that most voters in California if asked "do you think it's a bad thing to cruelly slaughter horses?" will say it was. But the question should be "Should this state ban the sale of horses for meat and ban their slaughter?" That is a political proposition, an anti-libertarian and illiberal proposition.

The people have the power to enact such a law, the question should be is it wise for a majority to do such a thing? In Britain "the hounds men are still popular" you say. What does that mean? Fox hunting is disapproved of by the majority but the will to ban it is fading. The hunts have always been very keen on the horsemeat trade, it is the best way of keeping down their running costs, feeding the old horses to the hounds.

We don't eat horses in Britain but we don't like to ban things without good reason. There is no good reason to allow cattle to be strung up by their hooves but not horses. We can see that. Although many British people would not dream of eating horsemeat themselves they see no good reason to ban the trade.

It might be horsemeat today, but what will it be tomorrow? There is a great tradition of liberal tolerance in Britain and America, it is the finest political tradition we share. It sees a great difference between liberal democracy and naked populism. Do we really want to live in a country that bans all forms of cruelty to animals but has live TV executions? The majority isn't always wise and it doesn't always press for what is in its best interest. We should be cautious with the power of the majority.

We do obviously disagree, well spotted. You were beaten at the voting booth, I'm glad, because you were being un-American. People had sympathy for your cause but did not want a formal ban. There is no problem in explaining why you can receive support of up to 93% in opinion polls on some question and yet have a bill defeated. People may, in the abstract, "want something done" about the "problem" of eating horses, especially if grabbed in the street by earnest women holding pictures of dead horses but they don't think, in the cold light of day, that it is a suitable subject for restrictive legislation.

My opinion of the American electorate has increased.

Oops. Sorry, I misread.

So my opinion of the American electorate returns to the post-Arnold level.

It's as American as McCarthyism, prohibition and your crazy attitude to travel to Cuba.

I want to applaud you for standing up and stating an intelligent point of view.

I think the biggest problem facing America and the rest of the world is a lack of TOLERANCE! I'm not putting a gun to your head and forcing you to eat horse, dog, cat, cow, pig, or broccoli. Why should you be allowed to stop me from eating what I like? I have Jewish friends, they don't stop me from eating pork. i don't try to force them to eat it.

America was a land of tolerance. We accepted people of every race, creed, and nationality. Can't we accept what they have on the dinner plate? Why must some try to transform others into an image of themselves. This is what starts wars people. Remember the Crusades? No, how about 9/11?

I also feel that it is wrong to ban the slaughter and sale of horse meat. Not because I hate horses. I am a horse owner and a trainer. I know that many people form emotional bonds with horses, but people also bond to snakes, spiders, rats, and dozens of other types of creatures.

I say "Be an American" accept your neighbor for who he is. If you object to what he has for supper offer a polite "No thanks" and eat at home and keep your opinion to yourself.

Thanks for listening

How come the so called horse lovers didn't have the common sense to work out what would happen?

Doesn't anybody teach the basic concepts of economics in America? A horse doesn't kill and bury itself. Of course it makes more sense to sell a horse for slaughter than to have to pay somebody to dig a hole to bury the thing and have half its weight in flies emerge over the next few months.

A meat trade ensures horses have a value, and things that have a value are obviously going to be better looked after than things which are simply liabilities. People look after horses because they are valuable to them, when they are no longer valuable to them it must be better for the horses that somebody finds they still have a value.

Americans lacking horse-sense?