Last week at La Luna we got the off-the-menu special: braised horse shanks with orecchiette.
Horse only recently became avaliable for human consumption in Australia. Vince Garreffa, over in Perth, got approval from whatever relevant body a few months ago and started selling it. I called him to order some on D-Day, actually, but the price of air freight made me decide to hold off until someone in Melbourne started selling it took.
Garreffa is a brave man. You see, people have threatened to kill him. He starts selling a particular product and the response of a certain class of individual is to make death threats. Now, I'm sure there are some--vegans, whoever--who wouldn't have liked this guy even before he got in the horse meat trade, given that he's a butcher. But there are others who I have no doubt would be happy buying his (beef) steaks or chicken breasts or lamb shanks who are morally outraged to the point of behaving like psychopathic criminals when he comes out and says he's offering consumers another choice.
Now, fair enough. Maybe you like horses. Maybe you like them so much that you don't think they should get killed for meat. So boycott the guy's business. Organise a petition. Fight the power on Twitter or Blogger. Wave a fucking placard while standing atop a fucking plastic milk crate.
People, of course, ate horse in Australia prior to all this. The meat was avaliable for pets and the truly keen got it that way. Or other people just knew people who knew people. I wasn't going to eat pet meat and I didn't have the right sort of dodgy contacts, so my first horse experience had to wait until last week.
After Garreffa started selling horse, Embrasse in Carlton announced a horse tasting night and, sure enough, the psychopaths and food Nazis gave them a hard time. Going above and beyond any sane person's definition of an acceptable and moral protest, they forced the restaurant's hand. The plug was pulled.
It's odd that for some people, the only meats acceptable for human consumption are beef, chicken, lamb and pork. There are irrational lines drawn. Perhaps due to cultural indoctrination. Perhaps due to fond memories of pets or Mr Ed the talking horse (delicious) or Skippy the bush kangaroo (delicious). I don't buy that it's about saving the animals, as few of the animals in question are anywhere close to endangered. Some, like our local population of camels (delicious) and wild rabbits (also delicious), are fucking pests. There's something gross or sacred or forbidden about other meats. You should see the reaction when I drop that, yeah, I've eaten possum (delicious--a bit like mutton, really). How disgusting. But it was farmed. Free-range and everything. I don't buy that some animals are cute and fluffy and that's why people love them so. A possum is fluffy but it stops being cute once you've gone through the very Australian exeperience of having one invade your roof cavity. A suckling pig or baa lamb is cute as hell and fluffy, too, but that doesn't stop them from being something folks would happily eat spit-roasted with potatoes and gravy.
I'm happy brave people like Garreffa exist. To the nay sayers, I suggest not buying his horse meat and, if you must whinge irrationally, do so legally and morally. Boycott and etc. Me, tho', I've enjoyed beef and veal and chicken and pork and lamb and mutton and goat and quail and duck and turkey and pigeon and pheasant and silkie and guniea fowl and mutton bird and rabbit and hare and possum and horse and camel and wild boar and venison and emu and ostrich and crocodile and wallaby and buffalo and alpaca and some others I've probably forgotten.
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