And I thought only big law associates were forced to eat horse meat. Oh, I'm sorry, they're forced to eat dog s***.

You get dog s***? Man, my firm doesn't even give us dog s***! I think that we need to start a thread about what kind of s*** people at different firms are forced to eat.

Do you think Posner got permission to reprint the picture? Copyright violation! And now it's in the public domain... Rod Aydelotte of the AP can't be happy with this...

It's like an Article III Taking of IP.

horse = zebra
so what?

I ate a horse once- seriously, I ate the whole fucking thing...

I thought that was the main ingredient in a Whopper?

Wait - so a dog can eat horse meat but I can't eat the dog or the horse? That's fucked up.

Okay, either being bored or a law-geek, I read the opinion. My favorite parts:

"States have a legitimate interest in prolonging the lives of animals that their population happens to like."

"But even if no horses live longer as a result of the new law, a state is permitted, within reason, to express disgust at what people do with the dead, whether dead human beings or dead animals. There would be an uproar if restaurants in Chicago started serving cat and dog steaks, even though millions of stray cats and dogs are euthanized in animal shelters. A follower of John Stuart Mill would disapprove of a law that restricted the activities of other people (in this case not only Cavel’s owners and employees but also its foreign consumers) on the basis merely of distaste, but American governments are not constrained by Mill’s doctrine."

"The curtailment of foreign commerce by the amendment is slight and we are naturally reluctant to condemn a state law, supported if somewhat tenuously by a legitimate state interest, on grounds as slight as presented by Cavel. Yet we are not entirely happy about having to uphold the Illinois statute. That the company is foreignowned and its entire output exported means that the shareholders and consumers harmed by the amendment have no influence in Illinois politics, though there is no hint in the history of the amendment of local hostility to foreigners but only of indifference to them, in the remark of the state’s agriculture director that “there is no domestic market for horsemeat and, therefore, no need for this practice to continue in Illinois.” Governor’s Office Press Release, “Gov. Blagojevich Signs Legislation Banning the Slaughter of Horses in Illinois for Human Consumption.”

"The fact that the governor’s signing statement acknowledges the role of the Hollywood actress Bo Derek, author of the book Riding Lessons: Everything That Matters in Life I Learned From Horses (2002), in outlawing the slaughtering of horses could be thought to inject a frivolous note into a law that forces the closing of a business that has very little to do with the people of Illinois. But this is not a basis for invalidating a nondiscriminatory statute that interferes minimally with the nation’s foreign commerce and cannot be said to have no rational basis."

BARBARO!!! Wait...this isn't Deadspin?

Are there any glue factories in Illinois? Because I think glue manufacturers probably have constructive notice that kids are going to eat the glue...so much for Elmer's in the Land of Lincoln.

What about bears? permissible to eat them? I need guidance as to what types of animals I may devour.

Animals that the population doesn't happen to like are considered ethically edible.

Too bad they'll have to close the slaughterhouse. Yet another job opportunity lost for Loyola 2L.

I live in Tokyo where horse meat is a delicacy. It is actually quite good, especially raw (basashi).

I think the law is fascist. I have eaten horse and it was fine and in no remarkable way different from beef. I wish they sold it at Whole Foods.

Realy, why can we eat horse (or cat or dog)? There is no good reason except the new left, totalitarians that they are, want to impose their morality. I hate stupid people whose mindless sentimentality leads them to anthropomorphize animals and imagine them to have any rights other than to get in our bellies.

(all of which isn't to say that i disagree with posner's legal analysis based on precedent)

And in closing, NYC to 190K (paid in horsemeat)

the real issue is whether we may eventually be able to eat other people who have already died for unrelated reasons

as it is, seems like a big inefficiency, not to mention wasting trees to make coffins

there's no difference between eating horse meat or beef. the only argument i've heard to support banning slaughtering horses for food is that people love horses. well people like deer, but they still eat them .get over yourselves.

insert 'the' between banning and slaughtering and insert 'of' between slaughtering and horses oops