If the objection has to do with animal cruelty and animal rights, I don’t see why horses should be spared when we routinely consume so many other kinds of animals. Obviously, cruelty should be considered as a stigma and an infamy, but you can kill animals in a relatively humane way. And it’s not as if plenty of horses aren’t being killed every year, either; they are just shipped off to some country where there are horse slaughterhouses and inspection departments. According to a June report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, about 138,000 of the U.S.’s 9 million horses were transported to Canada and Mexico for slaughter in 2010 — nearly the same number that were killed in the U.S. before the ban took effect in 2007…

What might happen, however, would be the last thing PETA wants. Americans are grossed out by horse meat, and even those few who remember it associate it with penury and disgrace. But not all the countries we export horse meat to are third world. One such land is our happier and more prosperous neighbor to the north, a big chunk of whose population was bequeathed a tradition of horse eating by their French forebears. One of the most celebrated restaurants in Canada, Montreal’s Joe Beef, serves horse flesh proudly, and includes a recipe for filet de cheval à cheval, accompanied by a gorgeous food-porn shot, in its new cookbook. “Horse is delicious,” says David McMillan, Joe Beef’s co-chef. “It’s like health food compared to beef! It makes you a strong lover, too,” he adds.