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Animal Welfare Overseas
- 1. Brazil Battles Blood Sport (Farra do Boi)
- 2. Fighting to End Horse Slaughter in France
- 3. Educating India - Ghandi's School of Animal Welfare
- 4. Fighting to Survive in Sri Lanka
- 5. Saving the Wild Horses of the Bahamas
- 6. India Takes Sterilization to the Streets
- 7. Spay Day in Sayulita, Mexico
Fighting to End Horse Slaughter in France
Heidi Fuller-Love
Equine Outrage
Fighting to save France's horses from the dinner plate.
For years, visitors to a country famed for its sophistication have been intrigued to see the plaster horse heads hanging over butcher shop doors. "I thought it meant they used horses to take their meat to market. I had no idea it meant you should eat them!" shrieked one British tourist when she found out what the symbol stood for.
"France is famed for its culture and progressive thinking, so it's hard to understand how our horses can end up on a dinner plate," laments Francoise Le Villon, local representative of the French League for the Protection of the Horse. Le Villon isn't the only one to wax indignant about the fate of an animal most people see as a friend and companion, rather than a gastronomic speciality.
Origins of Horsemeat
Common in pre-Christian Europe, hippophagia - the consumption of horsemeat - was considered unclean under Mosaic law, and the meat was never consumed in Islamic or Jewish countries. Sacrificed by the Celts and consumed during their pagan ceremonies, the steeds' first crusader was Pope Gregory III who, in 732 AD, exhorted his clergy "to help stamp out this execrable practice."
From the Middle Ages onward, horsemeat was proscribed from the French menu. Unfortunately, faced with nation-wide famine in 1866, the ban was lifted. Since horsemeat was much cheaper than beef or pork, the country's poor clamored to buy the high-protein steak. By the late 1800s, there were hippophagic butchers in every major French town. To make matters worse, doctors began to prescribe the red meat as a remedy for tuberculosis. Before long, a food that started out as a poor man's staple was adopted by the rich.
Horsemeat remained popular right up to the 1980s, until several decades of publicity campaigns waged by animal welfare societies such as The Brigitte Bardot Foundation and the International League for the Protection of the Horse began to send the consumption of horsemeat into decline. Until recently, in fact, the country's equine butchers were dwindling at the rate of 30 percent per year.
Sadly, meat phobias created by the recent mad cow and hoof-and-mouth crises mean the country's flesh eaters have begun to seek alternatives. In fact, worried equine protection leagues report that horsemeat sales rose 10 percent in 2001, with horse steak - for the first time ever - selling for more per kilo than beef.
"Over the last few months, our profits have soared 30 to 40 percent, and we expect to sell more than 50,000 tons of horse next year," boasts Michel Beaubois, president of the French Federation of the Hippophagique Butcher Shops.
Inevitably, with such a huge rise in consumption, meat sellers can't satisfy demand, and horse rustling is making a comeback, with unscrupulous thieves stealing family companions and making huge profits selling them for meat.
With 310,250 horses killed for the dinner table each year, France outstrips most of its hippophagic neighbors. Eighty percent of equines are imported, not just from other European countries, but from Argentina, Canada and the United States.
While most Americans are opposed to eating horsemeat, few people realize that the horsemeat industry in the United States rivals beef and pork in the quantity shipped abroad. This is according to Equine Advocates, a U.S. organization set up in 1996 to combat the problem. According to USDA figures, approximately 100,000 U.S.-bred horses are slaughtered in the country's three horse slaughter plants and then sent to countries like France.
Equine Advocates won a major victory in November 1998 when the state of California voted to make horse slaughter for human consumption illegal. Breeding, selling or transporting horses from the state for human consumption is also illegal now. But to be effective, other states must follow suit.
French Attitudes
"France isn't like the U.S. You can't afford to be naive," says Philippe Lamouroux, member of the Paris-based International League for the Protection of the Horse. "Eating horsemeat doesn't shock people here, and if you want to change things, you have to accept that context."
Created in 1927, the league has 60,000 members active on five continents and is probably the most powerful organization fighting the problem in France today. Obliged to accept the gastronomic speciality as a fact of French life, the league prefers to focus on the problems of live equine transport. Heartbreaking stories of horses travelling nonstop for days and arriving at the slaughterhouse either dead or with broken limbs and punctured eyes are all too common. Since 1995, the league has fought for stricter laws governing the traffic. "One day we aim to have live transport outlawed altogether," says Lamouroux.
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What You Can Do To lend your name to this cause, read and sign activist Jackie Clements' electronic petition to put an end to horse slaughter at www.petitiononline.com/trotaway. Learn more about the plight of horses |
Other organizations, such as the French League for the Protection of the Horse and the Center for the Protection of Equine Martyrs, organize "commando operations" where members attend auctions and buy horses destined for the slaughterhouse.
"Often, the animals are in such terrible condition that they have to be put down anyway," says Rolande Trolliet, a member of the group. Trolliet provides homes for slaughterhouse rescues and says she often feels isolated when it comes to taking action against dealers who mistreat animals. "There are just too many cases to deal with, and if a horse dealer has influential friends, there's almost nothing you can do about it," she admits.
Trolliet laments that too many of her compatriots see horses as "hamburgers on legs." Says she, "The horse has been our partner across the centuries in the fields, in the mines and on the battlefields of Agincourt and Verdun. Surely he deserves a better end than this?"
Heidi Fuller-Love is a freelance travel writer and horsewoman based in France.
© 2003 ASPCA
ASPCA Animal Watch - Spring 2003
Courtesy of
ASPCA
424 East 92nd St.
New York, NY 10128-6804
(212) 876-7700
www.aspca.org
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Educating India - Ghandi's School of Animal Welfare
