Goodbye Beef. Hello Horse!

By now Americans must be convinced that the federal government’s micromanagement of our economy has had a deleterious effect on our everyday lives. Inflation is rearing its ugly head. The price of gas, clothing and food is skyrocketing. The price of beef is particularly outrageous. I can’t find a frozen beef pot pie anywhere in this town. But there is one bright spot:

Since 2006, the federal government had effectively banned American slaughterhouses from processing horse meat by defunding the Agriculture Department’s ability to inspect plants that butchered horses for consumption. Without inspections, the meat couldn’t be sold.

But last June a report by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s chief investigative arm, found that rather than improving conditions for horses, the domestic ban backfired.

It depressed prices for horses in the U.S. and led to a surge in reports of neglect or abuse as owners of older horses had no way of disposing of them, short of selling them to “foreign slaughtering facilities where U.S. humane slaughtering protections do not apply.”

Who says there is no light at the end of a bureaucratic tunnel? The federal government has inadvertently provided us with an abundance of horse meat. Look out beef pot pie, here comes Mr. Ed.

In unusually blunt language, GAO officials urged Congress and President Obama to reconsider the ban.

Late last year Mr. Obama signed a spending bill that stripped out the defunding language, effectively clearing the way for U.S. slaughterhouses to ramp up horse butchering again.

You've got to hand it to the Obama administration; they have found a way to fight global warming by displacing flatulent cows with an animal that hasn’t been relevant since the buggy days.

Kudos Obama, Kudos.

Source: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/apr/13/new-mexico-firm-applies-first-horse-meat-slaughter/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/02/beef-prices-record-highs_n_1244133.html