Food Politics

Europeans Turned Off of American Horsemeat

Not so fast.
Not so fast.

Europeans: They eat horses, don’t they? Well, not so much anymore, at least not American horses. That’s because, according to a report in the Times this weekend, “The meat of American racehorses may be too toxic to eat safely because the horses have been injected repeatedly with drugs.”

Law requires that horses destined for slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico go on a six-month detox program to ensure that certain drugs are out of their systems, but oversight is lax and forms easily falsified. That means that American horses with Lance Armstrong-like doping programs can sometimes end up in Canada “within weeks — sometimes days — of their leaving the racetrack.” (So maybe it’s for the best that M. Wells Dinette 86’d their horse-meat tartare plans.)

But hey, if you are what you eat, maybe ‘roid-dosed horsemeat will become the hot new delicacy among pro atheletes looking for a performance boost.

Racetrack Drugs Put Europe Off U.S. Horse Meat [NYT]

Europeans Turned Off of American Horsemeat