One of Paris’s last horse meat butchers discusses the disappearance of his trade

And yes, bison is tasty!

Within a 30 mile radius of Parma, you can sample some of the best fruits and vegetables, stuffed pastas (ravioli), Parmesan cheese, balsamic vinegar, wine, and sausages in the world -- almost unbelievably cheaply! If you're looking for pesto di cavallo in particular, there's a great sandwich shop in Parma called Pepèn that I'd suggest.

If you happen to go there, know that the best pesto di cavallo shop is the one at the beginning of Via Emilia Est, just off the square to the right.

It's a tiny place, always choc full - you would probably recognise it by the queue spilling out on the pavement.

They only do pesto di cavallo, offering different varieties and even ready made pesto di cavallo tacos!

Chinese donkey meat sandwich. Looks pretty tasty.

I often wonder where the meat comes from though. Do they use young horses, or old, for instance? Also, the basashi I've had seems like it might be the tenderloin (it is very tender), so I wonder what happens to the rest of the animal. I'd very happily use it in stews if I could get it.

They'll charge foreigners one price, people from the Veneto another, and locals a third (cheaper) price. And that's if it's a decent place to eat, rather than one of the many very tourist-oriented locales where anyone local would never set foot.

It's simple: we have an alliance with dogs and treat them as our friends. Had truffle pigs been as common as hunting dogs, we wouldn't eat as much bacon. Now that this alliance is vestigial, we may see it decay - perhaps you don't believe in it.

Honestly, we probably feel more brotherhood with our work animals than we do with citizens of opposing countries. Makes sense, if someone came to rob your house the Soviets wouldn't bark.

Then, there is the idea that dogs reciprocate. We know at least some do, and we know that nearly every dog owner will claim that theirs does, and we know that a sufficiently inbred poodle won't have the faculty for it. Ether way, we are all told that dogs our our buddies who want to help us. Who would eat a buddy that wanted to help you? How many bacon-eaters think that the pig would, if it could, keep them safe and help them find other things to eat? Probably none.

(Note: I know that there are pig pets. Maybe they are friends, like dogs. If that's true, get the word out and porkchops stop tomorrow.)

2) Based on the article, the horse butcher claims that all their meat was from working horses, but that they were butchered before the "prime" of their life (before 9 years) or after 14 years because the meat is more tender then. These working horses are fed a good diet, so the meat is supposedly good tasting compared to farmed animals who are fed specific food to get them fat & large faster.

The contradictory way in which we see one living creature's value over another is the reason I became a vegetarian. We bred dogs to be (insert reason that's not food) we also bred cows to be (insert reason that is food), We are the factor here, not the animals. Just because we bred animals to be a specific way doesn't itself justify the industrial slaughter of one versus another.

With that said, my choice was: embrace eating dog, or stop eating meat. I chose the latter, but I fully support anyone who chooses the former, but hope they don't do so under the premise that one animal we control is somehow more appropriate to kill and eat than another.

A sick animal is unlikely to yield quality meat. (Or at least, much meat, even if the quality is fine. Ask me how I know!) The older an animal gets, however, the richer and more intense the flavors can become. We eat young steers, barrows, and chickens because it costs less to feed an animal for 18 months than it does to feed it for ten years, not because the taste is necessarily better. Of course there are many other factors that affect flavor and quality of meat, but it's wrong to assume that younger is better.

A great movie to check out if this interests you: http://steakrevolution.com/

What distinction would that be? People eat bear-meat, hogs are at least partially omnivorous, and virtually every food species of fish and seafood is carnivorous. Or else a carrion-eater, like lobsters.

Edit; the will is do here; I had pet pigs and did not eat them, they are smart(er than dogs) and very rapidly bored. But a lot of fun. Very happy animals in the right environment.

But there are also people (and it is not a small minority) trying to impose their culture and taboos on other people. Just look at all the pressure and calls for action against Chinese and Koreans over their consumption of dog-meat. Here is an example of a petition that gathered over 4 million votes (https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-yulin-dog-meat-eating-fest...)

This article seems to cover the ethical and moral points, nicely : http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/eat-cat...

I agree that food should be labeled honestly. People who engage in that kind of dishonesty should be punished. But the high pitch of the outrage was very clearly because of the horse-meat taboo.

>As for some animals being more protected over others: sometimes, in a democracy, you just have to roll with the majority.

I agree, I certainly don't think people should break those laws. It's not a cause worthy of rebellion and all the harm it does. But that can't be an argument in favor of the majority's position. That would be an argument from majority, a logical fallacy. Bad ideas should be refuted.

>Also there seems to be a pretty clear dividing line between pets and food.

Maybe in the time and place in which you exist, but in others the distinction is not the same. I have a pet dog, but I also enjoy bosintang. Is there a rational basis for why I can't have bosintang in the US?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_meat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle_slaughter_in_India

>Also people do seem pretty clear on not eating animals which are also widely kept as pets, with the exception perhaps of rabbit.

I understand that apprehension. I'd probably have the same apprehension if a plate of dog meat was put in front of me, at least at first. I've had pet dogs and I cared a lot about them. But to throw someone else in jail over it? That ruins families, childhoods, and lives. Just so we can live with the fantasy that Fluffy is a person.

Chemotherapy for terminal cancers should be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

Meat is tasty. It's a pain in the ass to raise and deal with those damn animals, and we wouldn't bother with them if they weren't good to eat or produced milk or eggs that are useful. The evolutionary forebears of the horse and the cow are extinct or well on the way there in the wild.

Maybe more people should have the experience of slaughtering a pig or steer, dressing it out, hanging it, then cutting it up. It's a great biology lesson, you'll learn which cuts of meat come from where, and you'll become very suspicious of supermarket meat (hint - real hamburger is not bright red like that).

I mostly agree with you about the meat consumption thing, but this?

Are you saying govt. shouldn't be in the business of wildlife conservation, prevention of animal cruelty or abuse, or preservation of natural habitats (beyond considering their impact on humanity) ?

If you find the theory of evolution a fact, then you wouldn't laugh at me. Any rational evolutionary biologist will agree that species are here to simplify the conversations, they cannot be used for ranking which species are better - they are also not the main theme of research.

Do you know how species are defined? Sane definition? - members of the same species can produce a fertile offspring. But there are hundreds if not thousand of exceptions where this happens even across the species boundary - the reason why it happens is that our labeling is in its core subjective and somewhat arbitrary, there's no dividng line/plane/svm-hyperplane.

In the parallel lines of time in evolution and natural selection we've been as long as all the living beings.

You wouldn't find homo erectus (neanderthalensis, habilis, rudolfensis, ergaster, floresiensis, even some australopithecae) attractive but you could procreate. There's a biological reason why you can't have children with a horse, it's not a species reason, it's not even ingrained in our species labeling as can be seen from the above definition.

What, you would rank the being as irrelevant (or less relevant) if you can't have children with it? Comedy of irrationality.

Go try finding your rationality and get back to us on that.