“The decision to eat an animal you also enjoy feeding sugar lumps to may seem strange…”
Few animal products are as divisive as horse meat. Britain might have eaten the stuff during both world wars and it may technically be a leaner alternative to beef, but fears over the safety of horse meat (and, y’know, how emotionally crippling Black Beauty is) mean that most British and American diners have little desire to deviate from the standard roster of farmyard animals. The fact that traces of horse spent most of 2013 surreptitiously lurking in European burgers didn’t help the meat’s image much either.
A university riding club in southern Sweden discovered just how controversial horse meat can be this week after news broke of its decision to host a dinner at restaurant renowned for serving horse meat.
Linköping University’s riding club held their annual summer dinner at De Klomp last month, where The Local reports they dined on a “mixture of cured meats, followed by hot roasted horse meat accompanied by warm potato and vegetable salad with chilli mayonnaise.” As if this weren’t enough horse-based debauchery, some of the equine enthusiasts also “washed it down with a beer called Dead Pony.”
The decision to eat an animal you also enjoy feeding sugar lumps to may seem strange, but Sweden has a relaxed attitude when it comes to eating horse. Sales of the meat outperform mutton and lamb combined, and when IKEA’s meatballs were found to be contaminated during the European horse meat scandal, the Swedish homeware giant responded by saying it would consider making horse meat balls an official menu item.
Before the fateful dinner, Linköping University’s riding club treasurer and vice president Frida Dagsgård wrote a message to members saying: “Pets have received [a] very high status in society. People have too close a relationship to them… only 60 years ago we ate horses and rabbits as [our] staple diet.”
Despite a presumably happy evening spent toasting to Dobbin with a Dead Pony and a mouthful of horse burger, a petition protesting De Klomp restaurant appeared online earlier this week.
Featuring on theonlinepetitionsite.com, it called on campaigners to “denounce restaurant De Klomp in Sweden, for killing a horse” and was accompanied by a suitably graphic photo of a dead horse. The petition received over 1000 signatures before being removed from the site on Wednesday.
Responding to the controversy surrounding her uni club dinner, Dagsgård told regional newspaper Corren.se that she had expected “some upset comments” but not an online petition. She explained that the idea of hosting a horse meat dinner “started as a joke” before “we thought that it was something we could actually do.”
According to Take Aanstoot, founder of De Klomp, part of the anger directed at the restaurant stems from horse meat-shy diners outside of continental Europe…(Continued)
Categories: Horse Slaughter
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
I see nothing funny any any of this… this is just disgusting… as for started as a joke.. maybe we could have a dinner serving old riders that are not longer useful…hmmmmseems more like it to me
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They are totally disgusting jerks.
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No one who knowingly eats horse meat should own a horse. That’s appalling.
And a hundred years ago they didn’t have medicine for athletes coursing through their veins! They didn’t risk eating drugs not for human consumption back then.
Being closer to animals is a sign we’ve improved as people, not a sign that something is wrong.
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Thank you. I agree 100%.
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This a bizarre counter intuitive approach to saving horses. The fact they did it then laughed and guffawed shows they dont respect their own mounts. The reality is I posted this story 23 mins after it was first published online and proslaughter erased from my timeline twice. They dont want people to realize anyone is pissed about eating horsemeat. It flies in the face of certain propaganda. This riding club did it because im sure they read the propaganda about Harvard. You know its funny you see all kinds of out of date back in the day people eating horses articles. This is a sorry example of horsemanship. Proslaughter or not this riding club did the macabre. This is so destructive to their credibility in horses and they dont realize it yet.
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How exactly did the group contribute to ‘saving horses’? I missed that part. “Proslaughter erased from your timeline”…??? What are you talking about? If you are talking about Facebook, people cant go in and erase your timeline…… if not, then who knows what you are talking about. “Propaganda about Harvard…”? Who are you talking to, do you actually think the general public knows anything about your private conversations? Geez.
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Freda said what???!!!
“Pets have received [a] very high status in society. People have too close a relationship to them…”
It is more like the innocent and trusting animals have gotten too close to this gang of horse-chompers! Disgusting – absolutely disgusting.
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A couple years ago I had a dinner date with a bison. I drove out onto Antelope Flats Rd. outside of Jackson. These was a bison there munching on sagebrush. And we just shared the same airspace for about 15 minutes. I ate my cheese and crackers and water and he grazed. He never once raised his head, snorted, pawed the ground or made any threatening moves.
After that experience I simply can’t eat a bison burger. I can’t eat a cousin of that animal that allowed me to be a part of his life for a few minutes. We simply watched each other and quietly communed together.
And the idea of eating a horse burger…I simply can’t. I rode for eight years, had my own horse for five of them. I saw a horse the other day while walking my sisters dog. He was on a long loose rein. The idea of dining on such an animal just repulses me. I can’t do it.
My former neighbor ate horse in WWII. But things were different then. There was a HUGE food shortage in Europe and families had to make do. We live in a more civilized world today…I think.
I don’t know how someone can make their horse a best friend one week and then the next week slaughter and eat him. It boggles the mind.
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Some of you may remember a few weeks back I posted the article “is it ever okay for animal welfare organizations to serve meat at fundraisers?”
Well it appears that some are leading toward “no”
http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/animal-welfare-organization-food-for-thought-plant-based
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Reblogged this on Sherlockian's Blog.
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Dear Linköping University’s riding club, Hope you choked on it or at least got really, really bad runs. A-holes.
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Sorry to say, I hope it was meat purchased from the US. It certainly won’t be so funny when you suddenly become I’ll. Or two years from now you come down with some form of cancer. This proves to show the World that some people have no moral values and its all a joke. I can’t wait for the law to be passed. These people are really sick!! I agree with Amanda M….if it wasn’t for the Europeans perhaps our horses would be safe.
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I wish it were only the Europeans that our horses weren’t safe from. Too many people with too much power here that are as responsible for the continuing horse slaughter. I’m with you tho, the law NEEDS to be passed. Soon.
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SICK
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If that meat is sourced from American horses, if came with a free side of Bute, and a chaser of Zylazine with a bit of fenbendazole thrown in for good measure.
Enjoy,
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THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU DO TO EDUCATE!
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