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MoMA Café Chef To Serve Illegal, Tainted Horse Meat?

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Vickery Eckhoff, Contributor as it appears in Forbes

“Besides being illegal, U.S. horse meat presents a significant public health hazard…”

M. Wells’s horse-meat bologna and foie gras grilled-cheese sandwich, as featured on Foodspotting.com.

Bad news may be good publicity, but not when you’re opening a restaurant, as Hugue Dufour, chef and co-owner of M. Wells Dinette learned when he announced he’d be putting horse meat tartare on the menu.

M. Wells opened at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City on September 27. Dufour’s plan was to start serving it once the restaurant “settled into a groove.”

But the sale of horse meat is presently illegal in the U.S. It is also illegal in several states, including California, Florida, Illinois, Oklahoma, Texas and—as of two weeks ago—New Jersey.

This past May, Mr. Dufour served horse-meat bologna and foie gras grilled-cheese sandwiches at Brooklyn’s Googa Mooga Food Festival, when it was also illegal. Photos and descriptions can be found on M. Wells’ Web site as well as multiple foodie blogs.

“You can’t serve it to the public if it’s not inspected by the USDA,” says retired USDA veterinarian, Dr. Lester Friedlander.

Presently, no U.S. horse slaughterhouses have been approved for USDA inspections, although several have applied.

Mr. Dufour’s horse meat comes from U.S. horses slaughtered in his native Canada, according to sous chef, Aidan O’Neal. But that’s not USDA approved, either.

A Fright At The Museum: Tainted Horse Meat or Foodie Experience?

Besides being illegal, U.S. horse meat presents a significant public health hazard unknown to the media, the public, M. Wells and MoMA, apparently.

The public safety hazard comes in the form of toxic drugs expressly banned by the FDA in horses slaughtered for human consumption but that are widely given to U.S. horses, including those just days from heading to slaughter.

At least one, Phenylbutazone, a common painkiller and anti-inflammatory used to treat everyday soreness in working and nonworking horses, causes cancer in humans (with raw horse meat posing the greatest risk)….continued

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12 replies »

  1. They were lying when they said that horse meat was legal in New York City..It’s illegal to sell it anywhere in the country!!! Hats off to Vickery! Once again the publication is spot on. And thanks to Forbes magazine! Even gourmet chefs have to obey the law!!!

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  2. You Know what this represents, GREED. I was once told that people will sell you anything you will buy, whether or not it is safe or good for you is NOT their Presidence…………………..They dont care who or whom it will kill.Its all about the Money !!!!

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  5. Hopefully a story like this will open the eyes of the American people to the horrific conditions, as well as; serious health concerns caused by the consumption of horsemeat. Above all else, our American horses deserve our dignity and respect, not end their lives on a slaughterhouse floor! Shame on Mr. Dufour for serving a product which #1 was not inspected (making it illegal) and 2 serving a product which could be harmful to one’s health.

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  8. Vickery always gets right to the heart of the matter.
    HOpefully this article will get to the many uninformed people out there.

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  9. Vickery does an excellent job of identifying this as an issue of ignorance. We have an ignorant media failing to explore in any depth at all the horrible cruelty involved with horse slaughter, the danger from the drugs in horse meat to human and animal health, the environmental damage that is done to local water systems, soil, and air contamination (one of my Chicago friends describes the area around DeKalb as filled with the smell of death) and thus, the obvious drop in socio-economic value to surrounding area—who would choose to live and do business in such a foul place?—the fact that almost everyone involved in promoting horse slaughter is involved to one degree or another in fraud and many of the so called “movers and shakers” have been charged and/or convicted of crimes, and the fact that 80% of the American people are against the slaughter of horses.

    For many people, asking them to even think about horse slaughter is akin to asking them to look at human victims of violent homocides. They simply cannot do it. In an ironic way, this revulsions serves the needs of the horse killers. Vickery’s articles with links to pictures preceded by a warning are helpful.

    Economist Thomas Sowell had an interesting article published in our local public this morning considering that we might cure what ails our country by paying Congress, the President and top officials, Supreme Court Justics, a million dollars a year and limiting their terms of service. He states that this is less than 1% of the entire Department of Agriculture’s budget. He said that no doubt we feel like we are over-paying so many of the people we have now, but if we could pay competitive with industry salaries, we might get the best engineers, best economists, and highly qualified people who actually understand what is at stake when committing millions and trillions of dollars toward certain projects which may or may not pan out. He argued that by finding the best people, paying them well, and limiting their terms we might negate the types of corruption that we must content with currently.

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  11. I would humanly put my horses down than send to aucton to make a buck . Cause you know where they end up .,what must go thru the horses mind to be subjected to this cruel end . There are a lot of people that would rather make a buck than spend money to give their horses a humain end .

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