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July 19, 2010
SYDNEY (AFP) - Australia's first butcher to sell horse meat said Friday he had received death threats and over 2,000 abusive emails, but that customers were delighted they could now buy horse steaks.
Perth butcher Vince Garreffa became the nation's first legal retailer of horse meat on Tuesday after years of campaigning to get a long-standing ban lifted.
"(There) were the only two that brought fear to me," he told AFP between serving customers, saying the threats could be the work of "a couple of over-passionate animal liberationists or pet lovers".
One threat had been so alarming he said he had referred it to the authorities. Police said they were not able to comment.
Garreffa said his butcher shop sells "probably every meat you can imagine that is legal," and put much of the opposition down to ignorance.
"The moment I remind (opponents) that Australia has been selling 50 to 70,000 horses a year to the rest of the world for human consumption, 95 percent of them fall over backwards and die of shock and are so embarrassed that they didn't know their facts."
Government data says that between 30,000 and 40,000 horses are slaughtered every year for export in Australia.
Garreffa vowed to push on with the practice, which he said was simply responding to community demand.
"The European clients I have got that have been in Australia for anything from 50, 40, 30, 20 years, they are so desperate for a taste of home," he said.
"When you come in and whisper, 'can I have a kilo of horse steak or a horse stew or a horse mince' -- we'll become the horse whisperers -- we will look after you, because that's the business I'm in."
The consumption of horse meat is popular in parts of Asia and Europe, including France, Belgium, and some Central Asian countries.
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