At Arnaud’s on the Rue Bienville in New Orleans, one can order the Frogs Legs Provençale or a nice cup of Turtle Soup if the Alligator Sausage fails to whet your appetite.

From a Kyoto street vendor, tourists can sample takoyaki, a dumpling made with fresh octopus. Longwood, Florida’s Deer Run Game & Gourmet offers to online customers beaver legs, kangaroo medallions, rattlesnake or wild boar tenderloin.

A DeKalb slaughtering plant produces horse meat. The only three slaughterhouses in America, including DeKalb’s own Cavel International, are either Belgian or French owned — Cavel is owned by Velda, a Belgian meat corporation.

Horse meat is not popular in America, although Cavel’s general manager Jim Tucker said it is leaner than beef. Tucker said the average person would not be able to tell the difference, except for horse meat’s slight sweetness.

Horse meat even rivals U.S. beef exports. In 2005, the United States Department of Agriculture reported 17,906 metric tons of horse meat exports — about one-tenth the amount of total fresh/chilled beef exports. However, in 2005 the U.S. exported 1,994 metric tons of horse meat to the European Union, but only 1,008 metric tons of fresh/chilled beef. Internationally, horse meat becomes salami, charqui, sauerbraten, pastissada, sashimi, and even a dessert called Basashi ice cream.

I’m thinking of a four-syllable word to describe American protests against horse meat: ethnocentric. This word comes from anthropology; it means to judge another culture by one’s own standards, rather than theirs. The implications of ethnocentricity are that we should not have the right to judge what Europeans eat based on our dining preferences alone.

Timothy J. Galvin of the USDA said in 2000 before the US Senate that the Europeans have a similar ethnocentric view on our beef. Since 1989, the EU refuses to accept hormone-treated beef; this disqualifies 90 percent of all U.S. beef.

Europe’s status quo is different from our: The Food and Drug Administration approves the use of hormones in beef, but the EU disagrees. Although no conclusive medical evidence exists against hormone-treated food, some people prefer not to eat a spoonful of hormones in their hamburger.

I’m now thinking of a second word, this time with five syllables: hypocritical. This word is not specific to a field of study, it applies to any situation where principles are “negotiable.”

Which situations? Let’s go back in time. Pope Gregory III decreed in 732 A.D. that Christians should not follow the “execrable practice” of horse consumption. Gregory’s reasoning followed the list of clean and unclean foods of Leviticus 11.

Strangely, Christian protestors do not often sponsor parallel movements against pork bacon, meat from a pig, also listed as unclean in Leviticus. The list continues: shrimp, alligator, lobster, rabbit, catfish, birds of prey and more.

Of course, many who protest horse consumption pursue a secular agenda. The horse is a romantic creature, a symbol that transports fantasy-lovers to medieval times or the Wild West. Horse slaughter protestors argue we should never eat such a majestic creature.

We should eat the less romantic cow or pig instead. Cows evoke images of stupidity and girth, pigs roll around in their own feces and eat slop. These are fitting choices, because apparently it is our duty as Americans to slaughter and consume such aesthetically displeasing creatures.

However, should we hold Europeans to the same standards we can’t keep? What principle can we stand on in assuming they neither have the right to eat horse meat, nor to purchase a factory in America to produce it for export?

At least it’s creating jobs in America.