Maybe Mine that Bird was running for his life when he upset the 50-1 odds and won the Kentucky Derby. In Tennessee, they’re trying to clear the way for the slaughter of horses for food — either for humans or for animals.

The idea is to open a market for horse raisers who want to sell their worn-out horses for their “salvage value” — that is, for what they’re worth as meat animals. Presumably, a consistent loser on race tracks would be a candidate for the salvage market.

Rep. Frank Niceley, R-Strawberry Plains, is sponsoring a bill in the Tennessee House of Representatives that would call for the state Department of Agriculture to draw up rules and regulations for the licensing and inspection of “equine slaughter and processing facilities.” I shudder to think what this might portend for the Tennessee Stud, that storied steed who carried its owner through the Arkansas mud and eventually across the Rio Grande, where it raced a Spaniard’s foal and returned to the Volunteer State with a sack of gold.

When his racing days are over, will the green-eyed stallion, “the color of the sun,” be herded into a slaughtering facility and reduced to horseburger?

The prospect raises emotions in the hearts of neigh-sayers who regard the horse as far too noble to land on the backyard grill. Niceley hopes a Tennessee plant might be able to market the meat abroad, or maybe to Tennessee zoos, where lions, tigers and wolves thrive on horse meat.

I’m not sure why the federal government regards horse meat with such disdain. It’s illegal to sell it in the United States, though you can cross the border into Canada and order it. Maybe the Yankee-dominated government has institutional memories of those desperate days when Confederate soldiers slaughtered their mules for meat so they could keep on fighting the Army of the Potomac. Johnny Reb found that mule meat tasted similar to venison, and he was able to mount stubborn resistance to the likes of Grant and Sherman. Could be that the feds fear a South fed on equine meat might rise again and declare its independence, this time with a more potent kick.

Could be, too, that the spread of the swine flu has raised fears of taxoplasmosis, which I’m told you can get from consuming horse meat. The disease is mostly spread by cats, so I don’t know how it gets into horse meat unless Dobbin somehow mistakes kitty litter for oats.

Word from the Web is that taxoplasmosis can have serious effects on pregnant women and can cause some personality changes. So, of course, can PMS, which afflicts non-pregnant women. I can’t vouch for anything I read off the Internet, but one posting warns that taxoplasmosis can bring on cat hoarding, which may be related to the fact that mice who contract the disease are attracted to cat urine. If you hate cats, try horse meat and it may turn you into a feline lover. If your house smells like a litter box, try horse meat and you may learn to love the aroma.

I shall abandon that train of thought and concentrate on the culinary virtues of horse meat. It is darker and sweeter than beef and is low in fat, high in iron. At least so I’m told. If you can’t bear the thought of ordering horse meat, you might try ordering “boucherie chevaline” in a French care or “carni di cavallo” in an Italian bistro. Everything sounds more appetizing in a foreign tongue.

Many people object to eating horses for the same reason they object to eating dogs: a horse is a “companion animal” and not meat-yielding livestock.

This doesn’t seem to dull the appetites of Europeans. In Sweden, horse meat is more popular than mutton and lamb combined. The French are quite fond of filly mignon (though I don’t think they call it that), and I’ve read rave notices about the compatibility of “boucherie chavaline” and Belgian beer.

So if paddock steak is able to break out of the gate in Tennessee, there appears to be a large market for it abroad. And with enough grassroots pressure, maybe the feds will drop their objections to it and allow Americans to partake of the delicacy.

To that end, a pro-horsemeat petition has been submitted to Congress and to the Obama administration, asking that they hold off the outlawing of horse slaughtering.

“We believe that it is the ethical and moral responsibility of any animal owner who is unable or unwilling to adequately care for their animals to sell them, and if they cannot be sold to personally ensure that their end-of-life experience is as stress-free and painless as possible,” the petition reads. Dr. Kevorkian could not have put it more eloquently.

“We also believe that it is an ethical and moral waste of a nutrient-dense food in a hungry world for livestock owners to be prohibited from marketing animals that have historically and traditionally be used for many purposes, including food,” the petition contends.

Dairy farmers are free to sell old, dry cows for beef, and sheep raisers are free to sell their old and mangy sheep for mutton. So why can’t old plug horses be sold for food?

I don’t know. But the thought of slapping a foot-sore old Dobbin on the grill doesn’t whet my appetite.

Readers may write Gene Owens at 315 Lakeforest Circle, Anderson SC 29625, or e-mail him at WadesDixieco@aol.com