If you wear leather shoes. Have a leather sofa. Eat lamb, pork, duck, or whatever the hell they make sausages out of (you can't convince me it's pork). Then you really can't complain here.

Hasn't the consumption of horse meat in the UK been banned (or at least seriously frowned upon) for centuries? So what, may I be so foreign as to ask, is the whole problem here?

No, I'm not glad ot see you, that's a Real salami in my pocket

"Quite where donkeys stand isn't clear"

Well, I've seen a few of them standing on Skegness beach. Cute, dopey-looking things with little sombreros on their heads...... Or was it Take That...

I always wondered where hors d'oevres came from - Do Horse User..hmmm..

this seems like the Sun whipping up a fuss over nothing. It is clear to me, that horses can be raised for two reasons. Work animals and food animals. Why is it wrong to ask owners, which sort their animals are?

It seems pretty sensible to me that there should be someone out there making sure that unscrupulous people don't use a horse for work (and consequently allow it to be filled with veterinary drugs and stuff to make it more productive) and then sell it on as food (with all the drugs still lingering)

Is The Sun's problem that the EU allows for some horses to be eaten, or that other horses are not permitted to be eaten?, It doesn't seem clear what they are angry at, only that they are angry.

Wait a sec, I used the phrase "The Sun" and the word "sensible" in the same post, I apologise. Let me add some bigoted bullshit to counter balance it:

Bloody Johhny Foreigner coming over here eating our good British horses and forcing us to feed French sausages to our children and making us elect Curvy Bananas as MEPs. Paedophiles the lot of them. Probably Illegal Muslim too. And they are all on the fiddle.

The next thing you know, they'll be circulating a form to ensure that you don't eat "long pig"! :-(

Dave

I was feeling suitably lazy at this time of day, so please put me down for a 2) and a 3). Cheers.

I appear to be a rather well represented minority that our delightful Moderatrix has completely missed out when providing cut an paste options. I'll provide a few:

1) (The old classic) 'Meat is Murder'.

2) The meat supply is all full of antibiotics and worse anyway, so it really makes no difference.

3) As a lifelong vegetarian, I have strong views on this - and that view is.... You let me do what I want to do and don't be awkward c*nts, and I won't impinge on your freedom to do what you want to do. Waft any type of meat under my nose for your 'entertainment', and I will destroy you.

4) (for the Buddhists amongst us vegetarians) One day you'll be reincarnated as a horse, in France, and you're going to get chomped. Your karma smells.

I am number three (You are Number Six), I have never eaten any meat, horse or otherwise, but I've certainly cooked it for people. And delivered consistent and annoying revenge on friends who have crossed that line and hit me with fish/rubbed steak wrapped in clingfilm on my face.....

Anyway, Where's the IT angle?

copy/paste #1

But I actually agree with the sentiment of the law - I'd happily eat horse, if I knew it wasn't laced with vast amount of drugs (well, ok maybe if I knew what they were and they were fun...) This is exactly why I tend to stay away from all sorts of foods - I have no idea wtf was pumped into it when it was growing up.

On the other hand, you want us to sign a piece of paper to say we won't eat them? Oh sod off back to Brussels you pointless bunch of wasters. I've got no intention of eating my horse, I've seen what the vet puts in it. If I do decide to eat it, it's my own silly fault if I drop dead or start growing sprouts from my earlobes. Actually, you lot can eat it and I hope it makes you really ill

Mine's the one with some mutant plums with beaks in the pocket. And a packet of fags for the pigs.

I have never been to france, but I have in fact eaten horse (so appologies to the moderatrix, but your copy'n paste preformulated rants do in fact not target my particular demographic).

(and when I say horse, I don't mean a leg of equine goodness as per sé, it was actually a horse/cattle meat sausage deal... at least I hope that was what it was... was what the label said anyway...)

I gather from the article that these regulations are in place to stop us from ingesting horse-flesh containing medications pumped into them by veterinarians? or are there more foul motives at play here?

I think we need clarification here: is it in fact illegal to eat horsemeat in britain, or does this ban only apply to your 'pet' animals which may contain substances so horrible that we can not ingest them even after they have been diluted (so to speak) in the horse itself? (and which we have wilfully pumped into the animal in the first place)

Green 'man stroking the mane of a decapitated horse facing away from him' icon for reasons not so obvious... who said e reg's icons were restrictive?

Bwahahaha only the UK will be dumb enough to actually abide by this rule. Anyone consider there's a 5ft 6inch fox out there that really likes to eat horse, and he's in the EU? You gotta understand Animals Are Food Too and as Sam Neil the actor says on adverts in Oz, "We were born to eat red meat".....so game on.

You can bet your riding boots, jodhpurs and stirrups that the French won't abide!

What you actually have to commit to is that your horse will not enter the food chain. It means you vet can treat illness or injury with drugs that are not safe in food animals. It means you can't flog your dead horse to the knacker man when the time comes but hopefully that time is less likely to happen prematurely due to having better drugs available to your horse.

Mine has had quite a few courses of steroids, anti-histamines and pain killers that makes him not safe for eating and is now enjoying his retirement.

The perfect rejoinder, you are getting exceedingly close to Ms Hyde at the Graun when it come sto responding to comments.

What are the hounds meant to eat if the Frenchies try to eat all our old nags?

When the horse can no longer follow the hounds on the chase, it becomes their next diner - it's simple really.

Bloody foreigners - they're nearly as bad as the townies!

stewing on the stove..

Where are you going, with your fetlocks bubbling

in the broth

All Hail the Moderatrix for managing to get "Damn Mexicans" included in a story!

It used to be that the humane way to put down a severely ill or injured horse in the US was to call the knacker. The value of the horse corpse (as meat or for other goods) was roughly the same as the cost of putting the the animal down and transporting the animal off to be put down.

Now with various groups pushing through legislation to forbid the sale of horse derived products, it's a $$$ vet visit, plus a $$$ carcass removal fee. Horse owners that can't afford it then just opt to let the beasts loose in the wild to die a slow prolonged death. Local animal control officers have also lost their right to put down animals that have been neglected or abused to the point of no return.

Yes, some of the transporters for the knackers did do cruel things like shove horses into cattle carriers to take them to the knackers so they endure a day or two of misery before they are killed, and thankfully that practice is now illegal. Unfortunately, by the time it was made illegal, the market that created the practice had already been legislated away.

Guidelines on humane transport of terminally ill or injured animals is the better road to take,

along with guidelines of testing for contamination of ANY animal going into the human food supply.

Are you allowed to ride cows?

If you object to signing the paper, buy one of those instead.

Bloody Eu, what will they be doing next, setting maximum working hours with their "time directives" and being the last legal barrier between us and the likes of Phorm.

I'll do you a deal, I won't recycle comments if you don't recycle articles from other sources and go and do some actual journalism?

Just eat the French and Belgiums?

And any other nationality we don't like.

Would solve the UK food supply issue and give us some spare land too......

Seems to me the easy way of getting around this enforced declaration is to find a feed buddy and sign a promise to eat each others horses should the need arise.

Not that I would advocate eating unfit meet (by deed of medication).

Over here in Canada the Metro is plastered with Militant Vegie posters showing either Kitten & Chick or Dog & Lamb and asking. 'Why love one and eat the other?'.

I could not agree more and will next week open my new gastro-pub called the 'Dog & Horse', with many lovely dishes e.g. Horse-dovres, Sweet and sour Labrador, kitten on a stick etc.

Eat you Heart out PETA... No I really mean it, go eat your heart.

Doesn't all meat that's supposed to be eaten by people have to be checked against, among other things, harmful substances, thus preventing such substances from being eaten, making this regulation unnecessary?

Congratulations on reading this far! Now that you've been thoroughly worked up by the media and by your representatives such as Mr Farage, whose job is presumably to conduct a Punch and Judy show and bang on about not giving up money with the Queen printed/engraved on/in it, you may like to know that your disinterest in European issues ("We still run Britain, innit?") - because it clearly isn't "spicy" enough for your short, tabloid-driven attention span - has led to you being easily distracted by the little things while the big things are sneaked past you in a parade of elephants you choose to ignore.

Because some of you voted for Mr Farage and those even more blatantly bigoted and inbred than his stablemates, you'll be prattling about trivia like this years from now, whining about how nobody looks after your interests. Back to reading about celebrities, Britards: don't bother to even look up next time!

Howzabout we cook and eat Eurocrats instead? Or better, feed em' to the lions.

Problems sorted - less of them, well fed lions, no worries.

Unless PETA decides feeding braised Eurocrats to lions is animal cruelty.

Quarterhorse-Pounder, chips, and Coke. Yum!

>" [ ... ] new EU regulations which require every horse owner to sign a pledge that he or she will not eat their mount [ ... ] "

So, they only have to promise not to eat *their own* horses, yeah?

Brilliant! I'm going to set up a web site where hungry horse-owners can search for each other, meet up and arrange to eat *each other's* horses! I'll make a million! All I need now is a snazzy domain name and a bunch of gullible VC investors and I'm made!

This sort of report is just nonsense. The regulations are pretty sensible, there's an explanation on the Defra website:

http://www.defra.gov.uk/news/2009/090612d.htm

Which is rather clearer than the Sun's garbled account. All this is about is making sure that horses that are owned in a normal way (i.e. not wild) are marked as either (a) food or (b) not food. You can't inject nasty unhealthy things into horses you are going to make into food.

That's really nothing to get excited about. Stupid Sun for making a fuss and stupid Register for doing the same.

Where I come from it's pronounced "Horses' Doofers". 'nuff said.

Oh yes please Sarah, a belly raspberry would be absolutely lovely.

Nay laddie, don't be throwing the sheeps clothing in the dumpster, toss it over the hoss, and go fetch the double barrell. It's time to put 'Ed out of his misery, and put some meat on the dinner plates.

Paris because she likes to ride. Ride baby ride.

I think it's excellent that the EU is concerned about vet drugs unintentionally getting into food supply via eating horses. That shows EU is paying attention to the details of the food web.

So, does EU have a set of recommendations on how horse-meat farmers can keep their animals healthy, _and_ safe to eat? Surely they must have at least something at the draft stage on this, since their concern is for food safety from what I read.

Paris, because the EU hasn't yet printed up a form for me to sign saying I won't eat her...

You can't have your horse and eat it!