Bo Derek's Washington Roundup

He says that others see horses as no different from other animals, such as cows, pigs, turkeys or chickens. And they understand that "if you eat meat, something has to die."

The United States "ought to be real careful about determining what other people eat," he continues. "Some people don't eat meat. I'm for them. When we begin to make a judgment on food we get on very thin ice."

He adds, "This is a very emotional issue."

It certainly is for Anne Russek. A horse breeder in western Virginia, she is among the non-celebrity horse lovers who give a lot of time and money to keep horses from being slaughtered. Russek makes several trips a year to Washington to do volunteer work for the Society for Animal Protective Legislation.

She says she was brought in several years ago to help Derek get her feet wet on the issue. The two women met with congressional aides. Russek says that having Derek on the team has been "instrumental to moving the bill."

And Russek says that while she has been able to lobby her own congressman, "Bo Derek can get to anybody's congressman."

On a recent sunny afternoon, Russek is sitting at a table at the Pink Cadillac Diner that she and her husband Steve own just off Interstate 81 in Natural Bridge. It's a high-spirited joint with a sure-enough pink Cadillac out front and a greasy-spoon menu featuring bacon cheeseburgers and an $8.95 sauteed calf liver dinner.

Horses, Russek says, "are being slaughtered like cows. They're not cows. They are flight animals. They are smarter than cows." White hair, hazel eyes, features fashioned by the outdoors, Russek, 52, says she has adored horses since whenever. She and her husband live nearby on a 30-acre farm. They own 10 horses and a half-dozen dogs, most rescued from shelters.

She adds to Bo Derek's argument by raving against: a pharmaceutical company that makes a drug for menopausal women from an enzyme in the urine of mares; the too-small trailers used to carry horses to their deaths; "kill buyers" who go to auction houses and bid on animals to slaughter; and her congressman, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), who is chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and opposed the horse slaughter prevention bill.

Goodlatte's office confirms that he voted against the bill.

As for the cultural-differences aspect of the debate, says Russek, "I would prefer that Europeans not eat horsemeat, because I am a horsewoman."

The United States, she says, "does not have to provide the horsemeat for that culture."

The history of horsemeat goes back a ways. In his book "Strange Foods: Bush Meat, Bats, and Butterflies -- An Epicurean Adventure Around the World," Jerry Hopkins writes that prehistoric humans hunted and ate horses. Ancient folks may have first raised horses to be roasted rather than ridden. Old Testament law ordained that eating horse flesh was taboo. In the 5th century BC, Herodotus wrote of boiling horses to mix with oxen.

Today the Japanese eat horsemeat sashimi. In the Netherlands, horsemeat is considered a breakfast treat. Horsemeat is sold in some French butcher shops and is on the menu in some of the pricier restaurants.

Alain Sailhac, a master chef at the French Culinary Institute in New York, has a special fondness for horsemeat. He remembers during World War II that there was no beef in his southern French town of Millau, so his mother bought a few ounces of horsemeat and cooked it for his sister, who was anemic. "It smelled so good," he says. "It was very lean. Full of protein. No fat."

It tastes, he says, "a little bit like deer."

Back on Capitol Hill, Bo Derek is taking a lunch break. She says she once ordered horsemeat by accident in France and ate it, thinking it was a hamburger.

She and the lobbyists are going over their notes and deconstructing their morning meetings. Her nightmare is that the issue will get jostled aside by others and won't be taken up before the end of the year. Then, next year, she -- and Anne Russek and Willie Nelson and other horse lovers -- will have to make more trips to Washington to educate a whole new batch of lawmakers.