>>715456860American horse lovers think it's immoral and evil. They've lobbied to government so much the FDA had to pull all horse meat inspectors and facilities, making horse meat effectively illegal to sell. You can still buy it off a local rancher you're pals with but it's impossible to find it commercially- and those few ranchers that do that are rare, and often get bullied into not raising meat horses.
I work in federal land management and one of the biggest scourges on American wilderness- on par with fire- are the wild horse populations. They are federally protected because of animal rights groups (and one specific woman) campaigning in the 1970s and 80s to save the iconic wild horses! Thing is, wild horses are not native to the America's. They've become naturalized, yes, but they're not native. They destroy water sources, especially in deserts, overeat leaving less plants for deep, bighorn sheep, elk, and other native animals, and worst of all, overpopulate and make the issue worse because people feed them and there's no more predators to keep them in check like they would have had back in the cowboy days. The lands CAN support a population of wild horses, but the populations are too fucking big. The only way to handle them, since killing wild horses was banned, is to round up populations and sterilize them to prevent total horse-driven ecosystem collapse... AND THE HORSE LOVERS STILL COMPLAIN!!! They whine about us stressing the horses, of messing with the natural order- bitch, these horses aren't natural here!! They need to be GONE!
ALSO! Many of the horses rounded up are sent to federally subsidized ranches where they're taken care of by approved ranchers. Fun fact- the amount of money we spend on keeping these "wild" horses alive and healthy would be enough to provide free meals to all homeless people in the entire country. Horse meat meals, of course. But you'll NEVER see anyone Campaign for this.
Fuck wild horses.