’Contaminated?’ If I were a horse, I’d be offended

I HANG out with a lot of horsey people.

Not the kind you’re thinking of — nothing to do with gymkhanas or hunting or heated horse boxes attached to four wheel drives — but more your impoverished hippie types who rescue needy horses the way old ladies adopt stray cats.

There is a very jolly collection of them — horses, I mean — in a field at the top of my road, where they live out all year round, hardy natives who grow fur coats in winter and are the opposite of shivery thin-skinned race horses and posh show ponies.

One of these horses recently hurt his leg and was taken away by horse ambulance to the horse hospital. Luckily horse insurance was involved, or my non-rich friend would have had to pay for equine anaesthetic, knee surgery, antibiotics, Lucozade and grapes out of her own empty pockets. She laughs nervously at the astronomical bill and says the horse is lucky not to have ended up in a Tesco economy burger.

It’s strange how those burgers were described as ‘contaminated’ with horse meat. If I were a horse, I’d be massively offended. Enriched, more like, or enhanced at the very least. But then we humans are completely schizophrenic in our attitude to animals. Horses are pets, cows are dinner. Who made up that rule? Both are peaceful field dwelling creatures. Why should one be taken to a hospital, the other to an abattoir? Why it is my little pony, and not my little main course?

We are even weirder about the attitude of other cultures to animals. We recoil horrified at the idea of eating dog, but what exactly makes dog less edible than pig? You can’t use the ‘because they’re so intelligent’ argument. Pigs are far cleverer than dogs. Yet we buy stylish winter coats and meaty chunks in gravy for one species, while turning the other into sausages. We abhor Chinese and South East Asian cultures for eating anything that moves – snakes, owls, cats, dogs – and think the French are ow-fool for frying up frogs and snails, but what about us? Why don’t more people find the killing and eating of lambs on par with the mass slaughter of unicorns and fairies?

We have an illogical species apartheid system going on, which results in an imbalance between anthropomorphising some species while performing genocide on others. If you’re going to eat lamb, you should be equally fine about eating kittens.

Apparently everything tastes like chicken anyway, so spread the slaughter around more evenly. Pack them in cages, factory farm them, feed them recycled pellets of their own family members. In fact, why stop there – we could solve the whole ageing population thing with a few well-marinated slow-cooked grannies. Side of horse burger optional. Bon appétit.