As the Culinary Heritage AssociationExternal link announced on Friday, this form of flesh is not without controversy – “comparable to eating dogs or cats” for those who see horses as companion animals.
However, it said that Swiss consumption of horsemeat had increased after the French Revolution, when France revoked its ban on the meat. Horsemeat became cheaper than beef as horses were less needed for riding and pulling carriages.
“For centuries, the horse was too valuable to end up on the slaughterhouse floor,” notes the association, adding that a horse eats more than a cow, uses the feed less efficiently and consumes more energy.
Initiated by the federal government, the Culinary Heritage Association has an inventory listing 400 products, including salt, Alpine cheese from Glarus and rye bread from Valais.
Horsemeat and cheese from canton Jura were added at the end of this year. For a product to be included, it must, among other things, have been passed on from at least one generation to the next, and have been produced continuously for 40 years.
In recent years there have been scandals involving mistreated horses and mislabelled meat.
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The latest horse meat scandal:
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Horses in South American slaughterhouses are mistreated – and their meat might end up on Swiss plates.
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Earlier this week, a Swiss television programme showed how horses in Argentina, Mexico, Canada and the United States were being abused. Their meat eventually landed on Swiss dinner plates in the form of steak or perhaps in ready-made foods falsely labelled as “beef-flavoured”. “The images show catastrophic conditions,” as Federal Veterinary Office director Hans Wyss…
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Report prompts recall of labelled horsemeat
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The episode of the investigative programme “Kassensturz” on Swiss television showed footage of horses being beaten, neglected and transported for hours without food or water before being slaughtered. The revelations came at a time when horsemeat is already in the news for a completely different reason: a Europe-wide scandal involving undeclared horsemeat found in frozen…
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The chairman of the Association of Cantonal Chemists and a spokesman for the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) told the Swiss News Agency on Monday that the chief chemists of the cantons where the companies are headquartered should draw up a file on the matter and submit it to the courts. It would then be…
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If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.