After Helena Stahl, an amateur harness rider in Sweden, had to put down one of her racehorses because of injury, she might have reminisced with her friends about what a fine horse Iffy Mant had been. Maybe they did it while sharing a meal of spaghetti bolognese or chili.
Which would have been fitting, because Iffy Mant was on the menu.
After the horse was euthanized, Stahl chose to eat him.
"To eat an animal that had a good life felt right for me," Stahl, 24, told The Local on Tuesday. "I told my mother that if I could not eat meat from an animal that had a good life, I will never eat meat again. ... It is not what we do to the animals when they are dead; it's about what we do to the animals when they are alive."
When she served Iffy Mant, "Many of my friends claim it's the most delicious meat they have ever eaten," Stahl said.
As one might expect, not everyone thought this was such a great idea.
One naysayer on Swedish social media reportedly wrote: "You don't eat your friend, regardless if it is a dog, cat, horse or human. ... Who's next?"
Another said: "Weird girl! How the hell can you be like that? She should have shown respect and gratitude towards everything the poor horse has done for her."
Stahl would answer criticism this way: "To eat meat from an animal that might never even get to see the sun, nobody thinks is odd. But to eat an animal that you, yourself, have taken care of is suddenly the oddest thing anybody has heard. I think that is scary."
H/T: New York Post
