French kicking the horse habit

By JOHN LICHFIELD in Paris

They eat horses in France, don't they? Yes, but less and less, it appears.

A report published this week showed that a long decline in the eating of horse-meat in France - reversed briefly by the mad-cow-disease-driven beef scare in the 1990s - has resumed, even accelerated, in the last two years.

France is down to its last 1000 specialist horse-butchers, or "chevalines". Paris has only 32 specialist horse-meat shops. Twenty years ago, it had more than 100.

The French have a reputation for being willing to eat almost anything that moves and of not being concerned too much about cruelty to animals.

Times are changing. There are now insistent and increasingly successful political challenges in France to the corrida, or Spanish type of bull-fighting; to the forced-feeding of geese and ducks to create pate de foie gras; and to the wearing of furs.

But the changed times are most evident in attitudes to horse-meat, which has been a staple of the French diet since the mid 19th-century.

Shock waves ran through the French equine world last week when it emerged that "bourguignon de poulain" - literally "foal stew" - had been served to 250 leading French horse-rearers at a gala lunch at the national stud in Annecy, in eastern France.

One horse-breeder protested: "This is disgraceful. The foals that we bring into the word should not be regarded as steaks on hooves."

Figures issued by the national office of meat and stock-rearing show that - after a brief peak in 2001 when there was an acute beef safety scare in France - consumption of horse-meat in France slumped by 17 per cent in 2002 and another 10 per cent last year. There were 1300 horse-butchers in France as recently as 1999 (distinguished by a horse's head sign above the shop) but there are now fewer than 1000.

The decline is partly attributed to public health concerns. Horse-meat is banned in restaurants in France, on the advice of the Government's veterinary committee. But there is also a change in public attitudes, partly driven by the increasing popularity of horse and pony-riding, and partly by a public awareness campaign led in the last nine years by an organisation called the Association Ethique du Cheval. The association's slogan is: "Non, un cheval ca ne se mange pas." (No, a horse is not for eating.)

Its website argues that horses, unlike cows, sheep, or pigs, are "extraordinary animals ... which have for centuries shared the work of man, in the rain or the beating sun of the fields, work-sites and roads, but have also participated in his insane wars and, even, his struggle for liberty".

While welcoming the new figures, the association points out that 850 horses are still eaten each day in France or 310,250 a year.

(The Italians eat 350,000 a year, the Belgians 150,000 and the Dutch 80,000.)

Most of the horses eaten in France are imported from eastern Europe, and especially Poland, but some frozen horse-meat comes from as far away as Australia.

Defenders of "hippophagie" (the eating of horse flesh) say that the practice has helped to preserve some races of horses - especially large plough and draught horses - which might otherwise have died out.

One of the last horse-butchers in Paris, Julien Davin, 54, insists that he has seen no diminution of his sales in his small shop.

"Cows, horses, pigs, frogs and snails," he said. "What's the difference so long as the meat is good?"

- INDEPENDENT