Horse meat forms a significant part of the culinary traditions of many countries, particularly in Europe and Asia.
The eight countries that consume the most horse meat consume the meat from about 4.3million horses a year. For the majority of humanity's early existence, wild horses were hunted as a source of protein.
History Archaic humans hunted wild horses for hundreds of thousands of years following their first arrival in Eurasia. Examples of sites demonstrating horse butchery by archaic humans include: the Boxgrove site in southern England dating to around 500,000 years ago, where horse bones with cut marks (with a horse scapula possibly exhibiting a spear wound) are associated with Acheulean stone tools made by Homo heidelbergensis; the Schöningen site in Germany (also thought to have been created by Homo heidelbergensis) dating to around 300,000 years ago, where butchered horses are associated with wooden spears (the Schöningen spears, amongst the oldest known wooden spears); as well as the Lingjing site in Henan, China, dating to 125–90,000 years ago. During the Upper Palaeolithic, there is evidence for the hunting of horses by modern humans in Europe, as well as Asia.S.A. Vasil'ev. (2003). Faunal exploitation, subsistence practices and Pleistocene extinctions in Paleolithic Siberia. Deinsea, 9(1), 513–556. Paleoindians, the first humans to inhabit the Americas, hunted the continents' native horses shortly prior to their extinction.
In many parts of Europe, the consumption of horse meat continued throughout the Middle Ages until modern times, despite a ban on horse meat by Pope Gregory III in 732. Horse meat was also eaten as part of Germanic pagan religious ceremonies in Northern Europe.Calvin W. Schwabe, Unmentionable Cuisine, University Press of Virginia, In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spaniards, followed by other European settlers, reintroduced horses to the Americas. Some horses became feral, and began to be hunted by the indigenous Pehuenche people of what is now Chile and Argentina. Initially, early humans hunted horses as they did other game; later, they began to raise them for meat, milk, and transport. The meat was, and still is, preserved by being sun-dried in the high Andes into a product known as charqui.
France dates its taste for horse meat to the Revolution. With the fall of the aristocracy, its auxiliaries had to find new means of subsistence. The horses formerly maintained by the aristocracy as a sign of prestige ended up being used to alleviate the hunger of the masses. During the Napoleonic campaigns, the surgeon-in-chief of Napoleon's Grand Army, Baron Dominique-Jean Larrey, advised the starving troops to eat the meat of horses. At the siege of Alexandria, the meat of young Arab horses relieved an epidemic of scurvy. At the battle of Eylau in 1807, Larrey served horse as soup and as bœuf à la mode. At Aspern-Essling (1809), cut off from the supply lines, the cavalry used the breastplates of fallen cuirassiers as cooking pans and gunpowder as seasoning, thus founding a practice that carried on until at least the Waterloo campaign.Larrey mentions in his memoirs how he fed the wounded after the (1809) with bouillon of horse meat seasoned with gunpowder. Parker, Harold T. (1983 reprint) Three Napoleonic Battles. (2nd Ed). Duke University Press. . Page 83 (in Google Books). Quoting Dominique-Jean Larrey, Mémoires de chirurgie militaire et campagnes, III 281, Paris, Smith.
Horse meat gained widespread acceptance in French cuisine during the later years of the Second French Empire. The high cost of living in Paris prevented many working-class citizens from buying meat such as pork or beef. In 1866, the French government legalized the eating of horse meat, and the first butcher's shop specializing in horse meat opened in eastern Paris, providing quality meat at lower prices.
During the Siege of Paris (1870–1871), horse meat, along with the meat of donkeys and mules, was eaten by anyone who could afford it, partly because of a shortage of fresh meat in the blockaded city, and also because horses were eating grain that was needed by the human populace. Though large numbers of horses were in Paris (estimates suggested between 65,000 and 70,000 were butchered and eaten during the siege), the supply was ultimately limited. Not even champion racehorses were spared (two horses presented to Napoleon III of France by Alexander II of Russia were slaughtered), but the meat became scarce. Many Parisians gained a taste for horse meat during the siege, and after the war ended, horse meat remained popular. Likewise, in other places and times of siege or starvation, horses are viewed as a food source of last resort.
Despite the general Anglophone taboo, horse and donkey meat was eaten in Britain, especially in Yorkshire, until the 1930s,Eating Up Italy: Voyages on a Vespa by Matthew Fort. 2005, p253. and, in times of postwar food shortages, surged in popularity in the United States and was considered for use as hospital food. A 2007 Time magazine article about horse meat brought to the United States from Canada described the meat as "a sweet, rich, superlean, oddly soft meat, and closer to beef than to venison".
Nutrition
Horse meat has a slightly sweet taste reminiscent of beef. Many consumers say they are unable to tell the difference between beef and horse meat.
Meat from younger horses tends to be lighter in color, while older horses produce richer color and flavor, as with most mammals. Horse meat can be used to replace beef, pork, mutton, venison, and any other meat in virtually any recipe. Horse meat is usually very lean. Jurisdictions that allow for the slaughter of horses for food rarely have age restrictions, so many are quite young, some even as young as 16 to 24 months old.
+Selected nutrients per 100 g (3.5 oz) Food source Energy Protein(g) Fat(g) Iron(mg) Sodium(mg) Cholesterol(mg)(kJ)(Cal)Game meat, horse, raw 21 5 3.8 53 52Beef, strip steak, raw 23 3 1.9 55 55
Production
In most countries where horses are slaughtered for food, they are processed in a similar fashion to cattle, i.e., in large-scale factory slaughter houses (abattoirs) where they are stunned with a captive bolt gun and bled to death. In countries with a less industrialized food-production system, horses and other animals are slaughtered individually outdoors as needed, in or near the village where they will be consumed.
+Ten largest producers of horse meat in 2018 CountryNumber of animals Production(tonnes) 1. 1,589,164 200,452 2. 718,027 126,520 3. 634,845 83,922 4. 397,271 57,193 5. 250,248 45,388 6. 114,841 29,275 7. 127,656 27,395 8. 188,531 24,566 9. 86,244 24,148 10. 155,177 23,762 Total4,262,004 642,621
In 2005, the eight principal horse meat-producing countries produced over 700,000 tonnes of it. At that time, the five biggest horse meat-consuming countries were China (421,000 tonnes), Mexico, Russia, Italy, and Kazakhstan (54,000 tonnes).
Use As horses are relatively poor converters of grass and grain to meat compared to cattle, in the western countries they are not usually bred or raised specifically for their meat. Instead, horses are slaughtered when their monetary value as riding or work animals is low, but their owners can still make money selling them for horse meat, for example in the routine export of the southern English ponies from the New Forest, Exmoor, and Dartmoor. British law requires the use of "equine passports" even for semiferal horses to enable traceability (also known as "provenance"), so most slaughtering is done in the UK before the meat is exported, meaning that the animals travel as carcasses rather than live. Ex-racehorses, riding horses, and other horses sold at auction may also enter the food chain; sometimes, these animals have been stolen or purchased under false pretenses. Even prestigious horses may end up in the slaughterhouse; the 1986 Kentucky Derby winner and 1987 Eclipse Award for Horse of the Year winner, Ferdinand, is believed to have been slaughtered in Japan, probably for pet food.
A misconception exists that horses are commonly slaughtered for pet food. In many countries, such as the United States, horse meat was outlawed for use in pet food in the 1970s. American horse meat is considered a delicacy in Europe and Japan, and its cost is in line with veal, so it would be prohibitively expensive in many countries for pet food. Figure 8 shows 0.1% for pet food consumption, 70% for human consumption.
Meat from horses that veterinarians have put down with a lethal injection is not suitable for human consumption, as the toxin remains in the meat; the carcasses of such animals are sometimes cremated (most other means of disposal are problematic, due to the toxin). Remains of euthanized animals can be rendered, which maintains the value of the skin, bones, fats, etc., for such purposes as fish food. This is commonly done for lab specimens (e.g., pigs) euthanized by injection. The amount of drug (e.g. a barbiturate) is insignificant after rendering.
Carcasses of horses treated with some drugs are considered edible in some jurisdictions. For example, according to Canadian regulation, hyaluron, used in treatment of particular disorders in horses, in HY-50 preparation, should not be administered to animals to be slaughtered for horse meat.HY-50 for veterinary use (archived from the original on October 6, 2011). In Europe, however, the same preparation is not considered to have any such effect, and edibility of the horse meat is not affected.
Attitudes towards horse meat
Horse meat is commonly eaten in many countries in Europe and Asia. It is not a generally available food in some English-speaking countries such as the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, the United States, and English Canada. It is also taboo in Brazil, Ireland, Poland and Israel and among the Romani. Horse meat is not generally eaten in Spain, except in the north, but the country exports horses both as live animals and as slaughtered meat for the French and Italian markets. Horse meat is consumed in some North American and Latin American countries, but is illegal in some others. The Food Standards Code of Australia and New Zealand definition of 'meat' does not include horse.
In Tonga, horse meat is eaten nationally, and Tongan emigrants living in the United States, New Zealand, and Australia have retained a taste for it, claiming Christian missionaries originally introduced it to them.Simoons, F.J., 1994, Eat not this Flesh, Food Avoidances from Pre-history to Present, University of Wisconsin Press. This caused a controversy in Salt Lake City in 1983 where M&R Company of Hartford, Connecticut, offered to sell horsemeat to the local Tongan Mormon community who requested them but halted their plans due to strong opposition from other Mormons.
The consumption of horse meat has been common in Central Asian societies, past or present, due to the abundance of steppes suitable for raising horses. In North Africa, while horse meat has been occasionally consumed, it has never been eaten in the Maghreb.Françoise Aubaile-Sallenave, "Meat among Mediterranean Muslims: Beliefs and Praxis", Estudios del Hombre 19:129 (2004)
Horse meat is forbidden by Jewish dietary laws because horses are not ruminants and do not have cloven hooves and therefore are not kosher.