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I always shake my head when westerners get all upset about Asians eating dogs and/or cats. The latest in carnivore hypocrisy comes from horse lovers, as I found out today reading an article on SMH, from which the quotes below are taken: Racehorses For Dinner.

Figures obtained by The Sun-Herald show 2,000 tonnes, or $8.5million worth, of horse and donkey meat was exported from Australia from January to November last year.

So? Those who consume meat will have to agree, that the definition of it is "animal tissue used as food". It doesn't really matter which animal it comes from. According to numbers found on the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in 1997-98 the per capita consumption of meat was 74.2 kg.

"You can literally be watching a racehorse run at Randwick on the Sunday and the next week it is on its way to a dinner table in Japan," horse welfare advocate Laura Stoikos said.

Again, so? You can go into a sea food restaurant, point your finger at a lobster happily swimming in a fish tank, and it wont take a quarter of an hour to be served to you on a plate. As long as the killing is "humane", most of us can tolerate such behaviour. You can visit a farm and watch a calve sucking its mothers teats, and then buy veal from it the next day at your local butcher. I guess Laura is just telling us, that Japanese people are really evil, not only do they slaughter an endangered species, but they prevent us from developing our horse burial industry.

A former actor and model, only remembered by boys who grew up in the 80's due to her big ... hair, offers the following reasons for her opposition to using horses as a food source.

"Horses are never bred to be eaten. They're not even beasts of burden anymore, those are the old days," Derek said. "They're beautiful animals, used in sport and as companion animals."

If having been bred for consumption were a justification, or rather a rule for what can and can not be eaten, then deer, quail, moose, buffalo, and many more would also have to be taken from the list of animals that we are permitted to kill to feed upon. Her next qualifier is "beast of burden", to which I can only say, I'm sitting here wide eyed, with an expression of disbelief, thinking to myself "WTF is she trying to say?" Not surprising if you take into account, that this came from a women who supported Bush senior, as well as junior in their presidential campaigns. Clowns united. Next in line of painful reasoning is beauty. And I thought that by now everyone knew, that beauty is a subjective quality. I've met plenty of people, who would sign a statement claiming cows to being more beautiful than a horses.

Leaving us with the companion argument, which would actually force us to outlaw meat consumption, as every kind of animal has at some point been a companion of a human being. I can assure you, if it can be held captive, we will have kept it as a companion. To be honest though, this is the only argument I can actually accept and support, as it would be in line with my beliefs. As someone who believes in animal rights, I find it impossible to justify the killing of an animal to feed myself. But I highlighted the b-term, as it is just that. Some people like to believe in a creator, I like to believe that when lost and close to starving, upon meeting an animal I would decide to die rather than kill. And as reality has no creator, I'd probably kill a rat or what ever to live another day.

Miss Stoikos runs the not-for-profit organisation and said the treatment of the doomed horses was horrific. "They are trucked in like cattle in the dead of night," she said.

Sanity seems to be an exceptional condition.

Any "taboo" created, is just another form of religion - non-rational behaviour induced by psychosis. If you want the freedom to eat meet, then you can't tell other people what meat they are allowed to consume. The only exception being a threat of its extinction, and the last I heard, animals bred are the least likely to suffer such a fait. By the way, I'm a vegetarian, who keeps playing with the idea to turn vegan, but that is a personal life style choice. So carnivores, if you don't want to eat meat, join us. If not, well then stop telling other carnivores "you are bad", as you are not just as bad, but even worse - a carnivore living in denial.