They Eat Horses, Don’t They?: Horses make things extra-complicated when we debate how humans should treat animals
The belief in human supremacy over other living beings is tenacious, particularly when the other living beings are thousand-plus-pound animals who have a habit of challenging domination. Other domestic animals – dogs, cats – have settled into a niche in human society. But when it comes to horses the relationship is inherently complicated. In Canada, horses are designated as livestock. The animals we view as pets don’t typically end up on our plates, yet every year thousands of horses in Canada are purpose-bred to be eaten.
LI ROBBINS: When Black Beauty was a foal he led an idyllic life, gambolling around a pond in a large pleasant meadow… The 1877 novel by Anna Sewell, billed as “the autobiography of a horse,” was a cri-de-coeur against such commonplace cruelties. It encouraged readers to consider life from a horse’s point of view in an era when they were seen as instruments of labour and symbols of wealth, in both cases required to do man’s bidding. It became one of the best-selling books of all time…
Wickedness and ignorance, when it comes to the treatment of horses, are sadly not relegated to previous centuries. Just last year a horse in Ontario was dragged behind a moving vehicle until her hooves bled, a case that sparked outrage on social media and disgrace for the perpetrator – a horse trainer. The provincial court sentence was a mere $2,500 fine and a five-year ban from involvement with horses – but only in the province of Ontario…
The belief in human supremacy over other living beings is tenacious, particularly when the other living beings are thousand-plus-pound animals who have a habit of challenging domination. Other domestic animals – dogs, cats – have settled into a niche in human society. But when it comes to horses the relationship is inherently complicated. They can be “pasture puffs” grazing their days away; they can be Olympic athletes. They’re viewed as near-magical in therapeutic and educational settings; they’re innately dangerous flight animals. Horses are symbols of freedom; horses are sashimi on the hoof.
It’s this last point that’s particularly troubling. The animals we view as pets don’t typically end up on our plates, yet every year thousands of horses in Canada are purpose-bred to be eaten. Which animals we consider okay to eat and which we don’t may be an unresolvable debate. Regardless, loading terrified horses onto planes so restaurant patrons abroad can enjoy their flesh at its freshest rubs many the wrong way…
The complexity of equine welfare in Canada is perpetuated by horses’ official status, designated as livestock and governed by property law… “Horses have some entitlement under the Criminal Code, but that’s not quite as strong as a right,” says Vancouver-based animal-law lawyer Victoria Shroff. “Animal rights are still very much aspirational and notional.” Ms. Shroff, along with a growing number of animal-rights lawyers, sees a need for laws that recognize animal sentience, acknowledging that animals are “someones rather than somethings.”
Some jurisdictions have taken this step, including Britain with its 2022 Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act. But acknowledgment of animal sentience in law has lagged behind both public opinion and science. Back in 2012, a group of neuroscientists published the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness, a scientific stamp of recognition that yes, animals are conscious beings with feelings too. In Canada, Quebec is the lone province with an animal-sentience law, and horses continue to be slaughtered for meat in that province.
“When we bring in these provisions they have to get embedded into the law as more than a declaratory statement,” Ms. Shroff says. “They have to become something actually realized in how animals are treated. Otherwise, it’s just a nice sentiment that doesn’t take you very far.”
Legal recognition of animals as sentient is unlikely to spell the demise of meat eating. But it does have the potential to lead to more humane slaughtering processes and greater oversight. Britain’s 2022 act, for example, calls for the establishment of an “animal sentience committee” to review and report on government policy connected to animal welfare.
In the United States, David Favre, professor of law and editor-in-chief of the Animal Legal and Historical Center at Michigan State University, proposed a new legal category for animals in an influential 2010 article called “Living Property: A New Status for Animals Within the Legal System.” As “living property,” the law could view animals as individual beings and “reach legal results that are beneficial to the animal’s personal needs and wants,” Dr. Favre says…
In real life, people who spend time with horses delight in the specificity of the human-equine bond…I am not alone in viewing an animal as kin – according to recent surveys (and non-ironic utterances of the phrase “fur baby”), the concept has become well ensconced. Which is why, these days, it’s not uncommon to hear a person refer to an animal as a companion rather than a pet, or for some advocates to suggest the term “owner” be replaced with “guardian”…
As it stands, protections for horses are left mostly in the hands of their individual humans. Lucky for us, horses are often “generous,” as horse people like to say, meaning most tolerate a certain amount of human bumbling… Ren Hurst, author of Riding on the Power of Others,… views riding a horse as akin to an adult abuser who coerces a young human victim into agreeing to abuse. “Basically [horses] are brainwashed and fully indoctrinated into the cult of domestication,” writes Ms. Hurst, a former trainer and rider.
Admittedly it’s challenging to make a case that horses are “designed” to be ridden. For one thing, their backs ache, as do ours (possibly more so, since we don’t carry saddles strapped to our spines). But like Ms. Hurst, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is as interested in the ethical issues connected to riding as the physical ones, stating that “in a perfect world horses would be free to pursue their own lives and humans wouldn’t make demands of them.” A breathtaking statement, and one unsubstantiated by proof. How could it be? You can’t ask a horse what her perfect world would be.
Like it or not, ours is an imperfect world. So perhaps… it makes better sense to treat horses in the way the Jane Goodall Act – which passed its first reading in Canada’s Senate in June – proposes to treat wild animals, through an “Indigenous understanding that all life forms of Creation are interconnected and independent.” In this view, we are by necessity stewards – it is our responsibility to make good decisions for horses. “Before we say horses shouldn’t be ridden, we can do our best to improve how we are educating people to understand what their horse is telling them, and to make it okay to listen,” Ms. Rohlf says. SOURCE…
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