I WONDER how much time the average European spends thinking about how the delicious horse meat on the plate before them came to be there.
I admit, I am only assuming horse meat is delicious. I have never had any. Horse meat is not exactly a common item on the menu, or in supermarkets, in these parts.
In Europe, however, where public concern over the welfare of seals off Canada's east coast has led to a EU-wide ban on the sale of imported seal products, horse meat is quite popular in many countries, including Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Holland, Poland, Sweden … well, you get the picture.
Italy alone slaughters more than 200,000 horses a year for human consumption.
How are the horses killed? Well, since this is the EU, where horror over the methods of the Canadian seal hunter led to a ban to stop that "cruelty," surely the butchery is humane.
The graphic answer, according to online sources, is that the horses are stunned by a captive bolt gun - a device which smashes the animal's head, sometimes more than once, to render it unconscious - then hoisted upside down to have their jugulars cut so they bleed to death.
In comparison, Canadian seal hunters, usually with a rifle but at times with a club or hakapik, strike the sea animal's head to render the seal unconscious, then cut arteries near the front flippers so they bleed to death.
If the two methods sound similar, it's because they are. Yet one is labelled inhumane.
Hypocrisy knows no borders, of course, but the Europeans are masters of the game. They are fine with force-feeding ducks and geese to produce tasty foie gras from their fattened livers, produce most animal skins - from some 6,000 fur farms - sold in the world fur market, and, as seen, slaughter vast numbers of horses every year for humans to eat, and yet still react with outrage, some of it politically-calculated, at the deaths of abundant seals.
Well, the Inuit are calling them on it.
"It is bitterly ironic that the EU, which seems entirely at home with promoting massive levels of agri-business and the raising and slaughtering of animals in highly industrialized conditions, seeks to preach some sort of selective elevated morality to the Inuit."
So said, with complete justification, Mary Simon, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, last week. Simon, head of the national group, spoke out as a coalition of Inuit organizations and individuals from Canada and Greenland filed a lawsuit in Europe last week against the EU and its seal products ban.
The exemption to that ban that the Europeans, no doubt congratulating themselves for their cultural sensitivity, tossed the Inuit's way is worthless, say Simon and other Inuit leaders. Just as under a previous EU ban in the 1980s, they point out, the result of the new ban has been a collapse of a market for their products - exemption or not.
The EU's ban is cultural bias, "at best," Simon charged. The Inuit have hunted seals for generations, but they've been essentially told their traditions don't stack up when compared to Europeans' votes.
Look, I'm no more in favour of the unnecessary suffering of animals than the next person. But slaughtering animals for their meat and other products is a fact of life. Lots of folks who would be horrified at being in a slaughterhouse think nothing of buying meat at the grocery.
Of course killing animals should be done humanely. But it's clear to me, from the big money interests of many animal rights and environmental groups - which raise tens of millions annually through anti-seal hunt campaigns - and outright lies of hunt protesters who use pictures of whitecoat pups, which are illegal to hunt, to sell a certain message, that this isn't about how "humane" the seal hunt is.
I'm sure that no matter what methods Canadian sealers used, there would be a powerful lobby poised against the industry.
The high-profile success of the anti-seal hunt campaigns, and high-profile stars who flock to the cause of protecting cute animals, have been a beacon for animal rights folks worldwide.
Anyway, while Ottawa fights the EU ban through the WTO, and the Inuit - whom I wish success - take the Europeans to court for destroying their livelihoods, China could prove a huge market for seal products.
Under the ban, by the way, EU fishermen are still free to shoot as many seals as needed - to protect fish stocks. Go figure. |
