'''Horse slaughter''' is the practice of [[Slaughter (livestock)|slaughtering]] [[horse]]s to produce [[horse meat|meat]] for consumption. Humans have long consumed horse meat; the oldest known cave art, the 30,000-year-old paintings in France's [[Chauvet Cave]], depict horses with other wild animals hunted by humans.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chav/hd_chav.htm |title=Chauvet Cave (ca. 30,000 B.C.)", Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, retrieved May 9, 2012 |access-date=May 9, 2012 |archive-date=AugustSeptember 85, 2012 |archive-url=https://wwwweb.webcitationarchive.org/69kxeSQXK?url=web/20120905180753/http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chav/hd_chav.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> [[Domestication of the horse|Equine domestication]] is believed to have begun to raise horses for human consumption.<ref>[http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~ENVS2/S2007/llam1/horses1.html Early Domestication of Horse] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121202061837/http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~ENVS2/S2007/llam1/horses1.html |date=2012-12-02 }}, Lilian Lam, Swarthmore College Environmental Studies, retrieved May 9, 2012</ref><ref>p. 21. Élise Rousseau. 2017. ''Horses of the World.'' Princeton University Press.</ref> The practice has become controversial in some parts of the world due to several concerns: whether horses are (or can be) managed humanely in industrial slaughter; whether horses not raised for consumption yield safe meat, and whether it is appropriate to consume what some view as a companion animal.
