"horses, horsemeat" news and stories

Here's the dilemma offered to us by Debra MacKenzie over at the New Scientist: since so many horses are being abandoned now should we slaughter horses for meat as a more humane way of dealing with the issue, or should we just let people deal with their own unwanted horses?

The problem is that horses are expensive, and grain prices are at an all time high at the same time that people's real wages are way down. A lot of horse owners are getting rid of the animals, some by dropping them off (the horses don't know how to live in the wild and will die, possibly by walking across a busy road) and others by just shooting the animals and dumping them illegally. As of now, it's difficult to get horses slaughtered in the US, and the Humane Society wants to make it illegal to transport them to Canada or Mexico for that purpose.

So what do you think? Apparently, the rest of the world doesn't have a problem eating horse meat. Should Americans be more open to the possibility of eating horse if it really were the most humane thing to do?