Yesterday, one of my friends sent me Joel Stein’s trolling commentary from this week’s Time magazine, where he advocates eating horse meat. Mr. Stein says,

I decided not to let a bunch of horse freaks… prevent me from eating meat enjoyed in Japan, Belgium, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and Austria.

Let’s see, we have eight countries in the world that eat horse meat, so therefore the rest of us that don’t condone eating the likes of Barbaro are “horse freaks?”

Huh. Guess this is one of those times where you can count me in with the “freaks.”

Mr. Stein then went on to say,

It’s not that I don’t think killing horses is cruel. It’s just that I think killing chickens, pigs, sheep and cows is equally bad. Morality based on aesthetics is pretty shallow.

Do you now? Personally, I find journalism based on opinion yet presented as fact not only shallow, but contemptuous.

Here’s just one fact - among many - not based on the “aesthetics” Mr. Stein sneered at. Slaughtering horses isn’t the same as killing animals bred and raised for human consumption. The American Humane Society (hardly a radical group of “horse freaks”), points out that

horses are different from cattle (and other animals specifically bred, sold, and transported for human consumption) due to their instinctive flight response in stressful conditions, making it difficult to accurately stun them prior to slaughter. Undercover footage has demonstrated that many horses are dismembered while fully conscious, underscoring the need to ban this utterly inhumane process.

Ah, but Mr. Stein believes that objections to horse slaughter equates us to being “a nation that thinks like a 14-year-old girl.”

Oh, puh-leeze.

Even if I could agree with Mr. Stein’s position (which will happen when pigs sprout wings and fly), I somehow can’t find it in me to respect someone who brags in print about lying on their customs forms so they can illegally import such a “delicacy” as horse meat.

Cultural taboos and humane considerations aside, if Mr. Stein wants to chow down on an animal that has been pumped full of pesticides and insecticidal wormers, injected with antibiotics that aren’t approved for meat animals, or given pharmaceuticals like Lasix, and doused daily with fly spray - all standard practice and allowed under current regulations, as a horse isn’t a meat animal for human consumption in the USA - then, hey, he should go for it. He richly deserves precisely what he’s injesting.

But first, Mr. Stein, move to Japan, Belgium, France, Italy, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany or Austria. This is the United States. We don’t eat horses here.

Bon appetite.