Way, way, WAY back when I was an undergrad, I flirted for two years with majoring in philosophy. I enjoyed many philosophy club meetings with like-minded argumentative nerds (remember those heady, fun-filled evenings, Margaret Boyce?) where, our tongues and imaginations loosened by cheap wine from a jug, we debated life’s answerable and (more often) unanswerable questions. One of my favourite topics was the one we  referred to as the ‘do chickens have rights’ question. The issue of animal rights is a luxury of the First World, but as that’s the world I inhabit, it’s a topic that I take quite seriously. Of course animal welfare is at the root of the whole animal rights question, and nothing is more welfare related than the question of whether and how it’s okay to kill and eat animals.

On my last post I clearly touched a nerve when I tackled the subject of horse slaughter in Canada. It’s an ignominious industry which I’m a bit ashamed to say I had not been very up-to-speed on until very recently. So I thought I’d make up for lost time by dedicating this week’s blog to the same topic. Today I’d like to get you thinking about two very different, but relevant, issues raised by the current situation with horse slaughter in Canada.

I thought I’d take a Philosophy Club approach and lob these two theses your way in an effort to provoke your thought (and your comments, which are always welcome):

  1. Ethics – ever since I was a little kid, one who cried when the horses fell down in cowboy movies while feeling indifference to the bullet-riddled cowboys, I’ve cared about animal welfare. Every beloved horse, cat or dog whose life has been in my hands has compelled me to make difficult decisions about whether and when the quality of life was not sufficient to preserve life. As difficult as those decisions are, I have always arrived at the answer by considering a single word: suffering. That is one state of animal affairs I cannot abide. Would it make a difference if horses were slaughtered in a way that caused them no anxiety and no pain? You bet it would. There would still be people who argue that it’s not okay to eat horse from an ethical standpoint, but in order not to be hypocrites those people would have to be vegetarians – and I’m not talking about vegetarians who eat chicken or fish or pretend not to notice the bacon in their pea soup. But as long as horses are suffering the way they are on their way to slaughter and on the killing floor itself, we have an ethical problem. Don’t you agree?
  2. Aesthetics – as per my point above, I don’t believe there is a moral argument against eating equids that holds water unless you take the position that it is not okay to eat any species of animal. However, I do believe there is another valid argument against eating horse. It’s not immoral to burn fine art in your fireplace, but you would probably not do it, even if you were rich enough not to care about sending that value up the chimney, because art holds cultural and aesthetic value (to most of us, anyway). And that’s why I wouldn’t eat a horse, because I believe the horse has earned a place in our culture that places it above being served for dinner. Horses have been eaten by humans ever since one of our barefooted ancestors managed to catch the first one. But our society, and especially those of us who inhabit a world that includes contact with horses, has come to value the horse as a cultural icon – a noble and generous animal that has served us throughout our history as much more than protein. We don’t eat dogs and cats. We don’t need to eat horses either. Don’t you agree?