A horse is a horse, of course. Unless you plan to cook it up for dinner. Then it's a sacred cow.

That was the message from the U.S. House of Representatives, anyway, when it voted 263 to 146 to approve the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act. The bill will keep horses from being slaughtered and sold as dinner steaks.

Utah's congressional contingent voted against the bill, feeling it was pointless and ill-timed.

We feel the timing was right. And the point was this: The amount of respect a nation shows its domestic animals is a barometer of its humanity. Think of the wholesale "dog slaughter" in China this summer that triggered consternation around the globe.

Since America was founded, the horse has been an emblem of nobility, grace and power here. Some argue that horses — not dogs — should actually wear the monicker "man's best friend."

Congress was simply saying Americans shouldn't eat their friends.

The U.S. Humane Society was first out of the gate to push for "house slaughter" legislation, and it has ridden the issue hard. The society's Web site is awash with comments bubbling with indignation. Opening with a comment from oilman T. Boone Pickens that horse slaughter for meat is "America's dirty little secret," the Humane Society tugs that secret out into the daylight.

To wit: Last year, not only U.S. horses were slaughtered for meat here, but 7.5 percent of those horses were imported from Canada for the express purpose of butchering.

One slaughterhouse in Texas made $12 million in revenue by slaughtering horses for meat but paid only $5 in taxes.

In 2002, Ferdinand — the winner of the 1986 Kentucky Derby — was slaughtered, packaged as meat and sent to Japan where he was served for dinner.

None of the slaughterhouses in the United States are owned by U.S. citizens. Yet each year, those "abattoirs" butcher 100,000 American horses and sell the meat to France, Belgium and Japan.

In slaughterhouses, horses are killed with a "captive bolt gun" that drives a metal spike into their heads. Sometimes the horses are only stunned, so are hoisted by a rear leg to unceremoniously have their throats slit.

Such details should not only make horse lovers cringe but make everyone balk before ever saying again they are hungry enough to "eat a horse."