In Europe horse meat is available at butchers, in the UK you can easily find butchers who sell it. I think the problem with horse meat is that horses aren't bred and kept for meat so there's no control over what they are fed or what medications etc they are given so it makes it riskier.
http://www.marketplace.org/topics/world/drugged-american-horsemeat-sold-europe
well, I'll bite, because I am a veteran of that merry go round discussion....
Approximately 100.000 US horses a year go by way of slaughter for human consumption, currently they go by way of Canada or Mexico.
That is about 1% of the population.
The majority are quarter horses and horses that look like them. Easily done, it is the world's largest registry.
However, I - personally - think the risk of drugs is overstated.
While it is true that drugs are more prevalent in the barn first aid kit than I have experienced in Europe, I also believe the people who pull out the bottle at every turn are in the minority and are also not likely to let their
pet go for food (now turning the 1200 pound animal into toxic waste is another matter which we won't touch on today), by selling it down the road.
Horses are given mostly the same drugs as cattle. There is the things about the FDA: you have to pay for the extensive tests to prove or disprove you medications. Since horses are - generally - not bred for meat or kept for that purpose, it is a net savings for the pharma company to avid these added cost.
But cattle, pigs, sheep, poultry...all is treated at some time or another and the withdraw periods are(hopefully) observed.
There is the issue of 'Bute' and I have to look the real name up....it's a painkiller, not like NSAIDs. It is known to cause cancer in humans. The official stand is that any animal
ever treated with that is not fit for human consumption. Where I can't wrap my little mind around is, unless it is a heavy metal that won't be expelled from the body ever, should it not be metabolized and eliminated some time in say, six month or so? That just as a side note.
In Europe there is a passport system established. As I understand, it's a two way deal: Horses you don't mind going for steak, and the My Pretty Pony...it includes detailed restrictions on what you can treat a horse with.
The EU has also established new regulations for the plants that process meat for them. That does include the Canadian and Mexican ones as well.
The sellers are to fill out forms, documenting the medical history or 6 month period of withdraw....is their room for wrong doings? I am sure there is.
The US lacks a centralized tracking system for horses. I know it sounds like a Big Brother scare, but it is not a bad thing for the industry.
Breeding and sport go hand in hand and it is beneficial for breeders to track their product or riders to follow the lineage.
Right now the situation looks more like in Black Beauty: With every new home the history is lost.
As European countries get richer, the taste for horse meat diminishes, although interestingly enough, during the mad cow scare the demand for Cheval increased. But in the past especially the Eastern countries loaded up their product by the train load to ship to France. A riding school my sister took lessons at made a pretty good living by selling the Polish bred horses as riding horses.
However, the idea of cross contamination should worry the officials. It means that hygiene was not exactly primary concern and the cleaning protocolls were likely not followed. It could be a bacterial contamination next!
