In general, humans do not eat horses because they have nearly always given their lives to benefit humans either to carry them and/or in some other way been a servant to humans. As a consequence, when a horse goes into retirement, they are deserving of a proper retirement rather than being sent to the knacker’s yard and eaten. In short, they are not bred to be eaten like livestock but to be a companion and/or a beast of burden in old-fashioned language.
In the unwritten social contract between horse and human it says that if a horse pulls a plough all their lives or carries a soldier on ceremonial duties all their lives then, when they are forced into retirement by their owners, they are entitled to a proper retirement where they can enjoy themselves in a field and be cared for as opposed to being put down and slaughtered to be consumed by pets or people.
However, the full story is a little bit more complicated than that according to Dr. Desmond Morris in his book Horse Watching. He admits that horse meat tastes good but that there is a taboo against eating it. And the taboo is not directly a result of our love for the horse or our sensitivity about animal companions. The taboo goes back a very long way.
In the beginning, in the Ice Age with humans dwelling in caves, horses used to be hunted and eaten on a large scale. They would kill them by panicking herds and driving him over the edge of a cliff. Then they were rounded up and kept under human control and domesticated. They were still used as a source of meat but they also provided in other ways such as milk to drink and their bones and hooves made into implements and ornaments.
But they weren’t treated as other livestock because they were useful as beasts of burden. They were useful as a means to transport humans and that was their primary function 5,000 years ago. The horse transformed human society. Humans had found great mobility and advantages in warfare. The horse was the most important animal for humans. They became revered and then sacred.
And so superstitious people believed that the horse carried gods through the skies. This linked horses to deities and then pagan religions leading to believers drinking the blood of horses and drinking their flesh (think Chinese traditional medicine today in 2022!).
And then along came Christianity with a campaign to discredit paganism and the devouring of horseflesh became unsavoury and wicked.
Horseflesh eating continued nonetheless which is why in A.D. 732 Pope Gregory III was forced to lay down a papal law to try and stop it. The Celts continued. They had a bizarre ritual up to the late 12th century in which the Irish king would have to take a bath in horse soup and eat some of it.
Although pagan horse eating continued for several more centuries it almost died out throughout the Christian world and other religions were also opposed such as Buddhism prohibiting it and Muhammad never ate horseflesh. Apparently, few Muslims today touch it. Hindus also do not eat horseflesh, apparently. Consequently, there was widespread religious restriction on horse eating.
In the middle of Victorian times, it was believed that the poorer classes had a bad diet and many were suffering from serious malnutrition. They believed that there was a huge amount of good horseflesh going to waste and in 1868 a special society was formed in England called The Society for the Propagation of Horseflesh as an Article of Food.
Millions of horses used as a source of transport were going uneaten at the end of their working days and they thought that people could be weaned onto eating them. But it didn’t happen. There was some acceptance in countries, especially France and Belgium, but in general the attempt to eat horseflesh was a failure.
The failure was due to a new attitude towards horses. There was a increased sensitivity partly because Darwin’s science had shown that there was a greater connection between humans and other species. There was an enlightenment about animal welfare and a growth in animal welfare organisations who opposed animal cruelty.
Vegetarianism started to grow in popularity. People became less bloodthirsty where animals were concerned. Although people could continue to eat livestock where the animals were raised to be eaten, other domestic animals were taboo because humans have a different contract with them and the contract did not include an end of days trip to the knacker’s yard. Contrast this with China (yes, it’s China again). They eat millions of dogs and cats annually as they do in South Korea and Vietnam. There is no such social contract in those countries. It seems like arrested development to me.
P.S. We are told that in the USA horses are given so many drugs, some of which are untested and certainly untested on humans that it is unsafe to eat horse meat. This occurs because horses are not raised for human food and therefore humans are not protected by regulations. This is an entirely another matter and a practical reason. Nothing to do with emotions. The Humane Society of the United States states:
“U.S. horse meat is unfit for human consumption because of the uncontrolled administration of hundreds of dangerous drugs and other substances to horses before slaughter.”
