For Shame Calgary Herald. For Shame.

Damnit.  And right in my backyard.

The Calgary Herald wrote what can only be termed an advertorial on horse meat.  And then of course wouldn’t allow anyone to comment on it, like they do their other stories.  Sad really.  I hate it when mainstream media write what are basically opinion pieces that are thinly veiled advertisements for the pro-slaughter activists.

Link:  Calgary Herald

The writer is Robert Frankel, who sadly has the same name as a Hall of Fame racehorse trainer.  What are the odds?

Here’s the article in full, with my comments to each point as per usual.

What horse meat scandal? Toronto deli owner doesn’t eat any other kind of meat

First off, I take extreme offense to the title!!!  I’m shocked actually.  WHAT SCANDAL?  How about the scandal that people took the time to read labels and were not eating what they thought!?!?  How absolutely ignorant of you to title your article like this.  People should be outraged at you for this very asinine title alone.  How about you go and pick up some food for your kids or grandkids, and feed them something unknowingly?  Fuck.

TORONTO – Horse meat found lurking in beef products in Europe has some meat eaters worried about what’s on their dinner plate, but not Filomena Lorusso — she knows it’s all horse, of course.

Yeah, she knows because she put it there.  She made a choice.  Unlike the folks in Europe who didn’t have a choice?  What about them?  Your ignorant tongue-in-cheek intro to this article (not to mention the title) takes a very serious issue and turns it into a joke.  Shame on you!

Lorusso, the owner of Toronto deli Cavallino Carne Equina and Groceries, feels so strongly about horse meat, it’s not just the only type of meat she sells, it’s the only kind of meat she eats.

“We do not serve beef, I do not eat beef,” she says. “I eat only horse meat.”

Ah.  How nice of you to have a choice.

Lorusso’s customers are mainly of French, Italian and Russian backgrounds, she says, but she has seen all types of people purchase horse meat.

“Any way you eat beef, we eat horse,” she says. “Sandwiches? Yes. Barbecue? Yes. Every way.”

Shamez Amlani, owner of La Palette on Queen Street in Toronto, says horse meat is not as popular here as it is in France, where he lived for several years, but it is delicious.

“It tastes like beef — a little sweeter, and more tender,” he says. “Don’t cook it beyond medium rare.”

La Palette serves horse tenderloin in two ways on their menu. Both options are $35, the most expensive entrees on the menu (along with the bouillabaisse) but Amlani says their horse meat is flavourful, lean, and definitely popular.

Please note here folks, it’s not going to feed the poor and hungry… so keep that in mind for those who like to whine about that.

“We want to serve European food and so when I found a source in Quebec that had nice horse tenderloin, we jumped on it,” he says.

All European food is not based on horse meat.  The fact so many people were up in arms about the horse meat being in their food should tell you that!

“I’d say at least one in 10 diners end up trying it. In foodie culture, people love to try things they haven’t had before. Being at the top of the food chain and a meat eater, why deny yourself something healthy and tasty?”

Healthy and tasty??  Well, I don’t know about the taste… I’ll give you that.  Maybe it’s absolutely scrumptious!   But save me the “healthy” bullshit.  Look up the drugs that horses are given.  Look up the very serious health risks to eating horse meat (Phenylbutazone is known to induce blood dyscrasias, including aplastic anemia, leukopenia, agranulocytosis, thrombocytopenia, and deaths, additional common medications include Clenbuterol, Ivermectin, fluphanazine, fluoxetine, methylprednisone, dipyrone, gentamycin sulfate, ketoprofen, Regumate and Lasix — all clearly labeled, “Not for use in animals intended for food”, and all commonly used in the horse world).

Oh, but it’s so much leaner than beef!!  Yeah, when you’re dying from the cancer, you can proudly say “I didn’t have a heart attack!”.

But he agrees it’s not for everyone. Definitely not for Kyle Boult, a financial analyst who lives downtown Toronto.

“I personally think eating horse meat is gross,” he says. “It’s not what we know. I’ve also heard it’s very tough.”

ONE anti-horse-eating quote.  Not a great one, and tends to make the non-pet-eater sound a bit daft.  But lets see how many ANTI-horse meat comments we can find.  IE the “other side”.

Canada has become a major international horse meat supplier since a U.S. federal court ruling in 2007 closed the last horse-processing plant in that country.

In January 2011 — when it was reported that 100,000 live horses imported from the U.S. were slaughtered in Canada each year — the consumption of horse meat became a national issue of ethics. Although its sourcing is still an issue, the debate has shifted to issues of personal taste.

How has it “shifted”?  Because of the “scandal”?  If you drill down just a tiny bit, the scandal has nothing to do with “issues of personal taste”.  The scandal, again, has to do with purposely labeling food incorrectly, and people eating things they normally, every day, make the choice NOT TO EAT.

Horse meat is eaten in a number of countries, including France, Russia, Kazakhstan, China and Italy. But the latest horse meat scandal in Europe has angered many meat eaters, especially in the U.K., where eating animals considered as pets is taboo.

OMG, again, they’re not only angered about eating what they consider pets… they’re angered that some assholes pulled a fast one and slipped those pets into products marked 100% BEEF.

“It now seems to completely be a cultural thing,” says Mark Schatzker, an award-winning food and travel writer and author of the book “Steak.”

It’s not JUST a cultural thing.  The Europeans have already been waking up to the fact that we don’t track our horses from birth to slaughter.  They are realizing that we take any horse from auction and slaughter them (inhumanely) and ship them over.  The Europeans are now putting passport rules into effect.  When will you pro-slaughter activists get over this fact?  Do you think all these lovely little advertorials will sway the Europeans into forgetting the implementation of these rules??

“I’ve spoken to Temple Grandin (a humane slaughter expert), who is sort of the ultimate authority in my mind, and she says if the slaughter is done properly, there’s no difference from a humane point of view between horse meat and beef.”

Ah yes.  Temple Grandin.

Please don’t mention that not a SINGLE horse slaughter plant uses her designs.  Please don’t mention that she believes the way ALL the slaughterhouses slaughter horses is INHUMANE.  Please, again, don’t mention that NOT ONE slaughterhouse has implemented a SINGLE one of her suggestions.

Schatzker also says that while detractors of eating horse say slaughtering horses is cruel, their intentions often cause more harm if they can’t offer an alternative solution.

And here we go…

“They got rid of horse slaughters in the States, and people didn’t have anything to do with their horses once they got old,” he says.

Yes, because only old and lame horses go to slaughter.

Don’t for ONE second think this through folks.  Ignore and carry on.

Do you only eat old and lame cattle (beef)?  Or do you have an expectation that the cattle are slaughtered when they’re full grown but not old and drug-riddled?

The horses that go to slaughter every day are race horses (generally only 4-8 years old).   People’s pets who can’t afford to feed them anymore and they couldn’t sell them in the market the way it is in this economy.  Most horses going to slaughter are YOUNG horses.

“They’re a terribly expensive animal to keep, so they were releasing them into parks and dumping them into other people’s barns and stuff. It turned into a crisis.”

This has been dis-proven.  Over and over and over again.  This was the work of the pro-slaughter activists, jumping on every single abandoned or neglected horse story and saying “SEE???? WE TOLD YOU!!!”.  It was proven by actual statistics that while there WAS a slight increase in abandonment cases, it turned out most of the horses abandoned were done so by KILL BUYERS and the SLAUGHTER HOUSES.  Say whaaaaat?????  Yep.  You heard me.

Dr. Melanie Joy, a Harvard psychologist and author of “Why We Eat Pigs, Love Dogs and Wear Cows,” has spent 20 years studying the issue of why some people consider it OK to eat some animals but not others. She agrees people’s aversions to horse meat have absolutely nothing to do with the animal.

Untrue.  Yes I consider horses pets, and therefore don’t consider them part of the food chain.  But there is SO MUCH MORE going on here.  The fact that everyone and their dog jumps on this ONE reason, shows how little they know.

“We haven’t been socialized for disconnect with horses,” Joy says over the phone from her home in Cambridge, Mass. “Animals like monkeys or gorillas we see as beings, for example, not food. It’s the difference between eating someone, not something.”

Joy, who doesn’t eat meat at all, says that if the food scandal in Europe had instead been that chicken was being replaced with turkey, the story wouldn’t be getting as much attention.

I agree, unfortunately.  But I would still be incensed that people were eating something that was not on the label!!

“People tend to think it’s only vegans and vegetarians that bring their views to the dinner table, but by saying it’s OK to eat beef and gross to eat horse — you’re doing the exact same thing,” she says.

Hmm.  SHOULD vegans and vegetarians be the only people ALLOWED an opinion?  I don’t think so!  I think everyone is allowed an opinion.  And my opinion is that we should not be eating animals who are (a) not raised in the food chain and (b) are considered pets.  It’s that simple.

And then the article just peters out there.  Why?  Couldn’t find more “reasons” to eat horse?  Or could you not find a single person to give you the facts against eating horse?  Something tells me you didn’t even try to find out the “other side” of the story.

Oh, and for the record, that ONE anti-horse meat eating comment was the ONLY one.  No big surprise.

And the bottom line?  Making light of the improperly labeled food scandal in Europe is downright despicable.