by Cecilia Rodriguez, Contributor as printed in Forbes

“Becoming dinner for foreign diners seems to be the normal final destination for retired or damaged racehorses“

One of the surprises we got when we moved to Luxembourg was in the butcher section of the supermarkets, where a selection of horse meat appears among the beef, veal and pork. We had to be careful not to take it by mistake since it looks almost the same as beef, if slightly darker.

We’re not horse meat eaters, although my husband has been tempted to accept a friend’s invitation to a restaurant that prepares “the best horse steaks in the country.” Throughout Europe – France, Belgium, Sweden, Germany, and Netherlands, among others – and in a few Asian cultures, horse meat is a delicacy.

We never saw horse meat for sale in the U.S., and only recently I learned that country’s ban against the slaughter of horses was lifted last year.

Clearly, it’s not having a wide effect: A new restaurant at New York’s MoMA PS1 Museum in Long Island started offering horse meat in  its menu, earning a story on NBC news where the reporter explained that “there is no real market for human consumption of horse meat in the United States” because many Americans consider horses to be pets.

Yet, as part of my education on the subject, I learned that a percentage of the horse meat sold in Europe comes from American horses shipped to countries like Mexico and Canada with a tradition of industrial horse slaughtering. Slate magazine attributes the tradition to the U.S. ban, which “shifted horse slaughter abroad, where consumers aren’t so squeamish about equine dining.”

What sparked my interest in the consumption of horse meat (called hippophagy, by the way), was a recent report by European food officials warning against U.S. horse meat because, of all things, doping. The officials argue that the horses have been so injected with steroids that their meat is toxic.

We’re not talking about a small herd. In 2010, the U.S shipped Canadian and Mexican slaughterhouses some 138,000 horses destined for tables in Europe and elsewhere. Becoming dinner for foreign diners seems to be the normal final destination for retired or damaged racehorses.

A troubling corollary is that we’re also not talking about an occasional dose of performance-enhancing drugs. It seems, rather, that we’re in Lance Armstrong-style country as racehorses suffer heavy doping throughout their racing careers…Click (HERE) to continue!

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