Gordon Ramsay's call to eat horsemeat has put him in the manure - but not everyone disagrees, writes Gillian Hamill
When protesters from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) dumped a tonne of manure on the pavement outside Gordon Ramsay's restaurant in Claridge's in London this week, they were voicing their disgust that he dared to tackle one of the last great taboos in British (and Irish) cuisine. The celebrity chef caused widespread outrage when he suggested on his TV show, The F-Word, that viewers should consider eating horsemeat.
John Carmody from the Irish-based Animal Rights Action Network (Aran), who participated in the protest, maintains Ramsay was not targeted because Peta prioritises horses over other farmed animals, but because Ramsay's status as a high-profile figure provided the perfect opportunity to raise awareness of the organisation's message, encapsulated in a sign which said, "just say neigh, meat stinks, go veg".
But restaurants rarely come under such pungent attack for putting sirloin steak on the menu, so why does horsemeat tug on the heartstrings? Not every EU country shares the same sentimentality towards our equine friends. British food writer Matthew Fort writes in his book Eating Up Italy: Voyages on a Vespa that, in regional Italy, "the taste for donkey and horse goes back to the days when these animals were part of everyday agricultural life. In the frugal, unsentimental manner of agricultural communities, all the animals were looked on as a source of protein. Waste was not an option."
Anita Topa (21) from Naples has tried horsemeat twice and says it's a great pick-me-up if you're suffering from the flu.
"It's very nice if you are weak because it's full of blood so it makes you strong again," she says, but qualifies her enthusiasm by adding that she loves horses and "would maybe try it once more but I wouldn't want to eat it all the time". Natalia, who comes from Betaniska in West Poland, confirms that although horsemeat is available in Poland, "young people in particular don't want to eat it because they like horses".
Perhaps our love of horses stems from popular cultural references such as Black Beauty and My Little Pony. Certainly, in Swift's Gulliver's Travels, it was a race of dignified horses, the Houyhnhnms, who caused a hardy Gulliver to turn his back on the unruly human Yahoos. And in Orwell's Animal Farm, it was when the knacker's van turned up to take away loyal horse Boxer, that it became apparent all was not well in the pigs' camp.
Janet Street-Porter, who conducted the horse taste-test at Cheltenham for the Channel 4 show, rubbishes the view that eating horsemeat is incompatible with our culture. She reckons her experiment showed the public is not nearly as squeamish about horse-meat as animal rights protesters think. "Waffling on about Black Beauty miss[ es] the point. When it comes to intelligence tests, it's been regularly proved that horses are no smarter than chickens," she said.
Some horse lovers in Ireland disagree. Ashley Boland of Clare Equestrian Centre reckons, "Horses definitely have their own characters and form strong bonds with people." Caroline Donnelly from the Eagle Rock Equestrian Centre in Caherdaniel, Co Kerry agrees, saying, "horses interact with people and become like family so it would be hard to think of them being served up on a plate". However, she also thinks that if it were to become available in Ireland, because it's sold in Europe, people could eventually get used to the idea.
Street-Porter is keen to stress the nutritional benefits of horsemeat, "It's 50 per cent leaner than beef, high in protein and 10 times richer in Omega-3. Gram for gram it is richer in iron than spinach, high in B12, rich in zinc, and very low in saturated fat."
But, as always, supply can only be stoked by demand. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Ireland's top restaurants are not forming a queue to dish out viande chevaline as part of their haute cuisine. Stephane Robin, manager of the Michelin-starred Patrick Guilbaud restaurant in Dublin, says, "Horsemeat is not a really fine meat - you would buy it from a butcher's in France, not a restaurant. We certainly don't have any plans to start serving it."
So it doesn't look like animal rights protesters will be losing sleep about horsemeat being sold in Ireland any time in the near future. One thing's for certain, though, they won't be converting Gordon Ramsey to vegetarianism either. The chef, never one to shy away from controversy, has said, "my biggest nightmare would be if my kids ever came up to me and said, 'Dad, I'm a vegetarian'. Then I would sit them on the fence and electrocute them."