MELBOURNE diners are hungry enough to eat a horse, literally.

Up to eight Melbourne restaurants have been quietly selling horse meat to diners as part of exotic dishes on menus.

"We send it out by plane all the time," Vince Garreffa said from his West Australian butchery, the only abattoir in Australia licensed to sell horse meat for domestic human consumption.

But don't expect to see horse steaks advertised or even published on menus due to fears of a backlash from equine lovers and animal activists, he said.

"The restaurants are too scared to mention it but when a restaurant quietly puts it on the menu nine out of 10 people will eat it.

"We call ourselves the horse whisperers," said Mr Garreffa, of Mondo Di Carne butchers. "Over the course of a year there are about eight restaurants in Melbourne" that offered horse, usually for a short time or to mark special events, he said.

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Mr Garreffa would not name the restaurants but said for many ethnic groups, horse meat was a tradition and delicacy.Carlton restaurant Embrasse offered horse on the menu in 2010 but it was removed after protests and threats.

Horse steaks, sold for $15kg for lesser cuts and up to $95kg for tenderloin, are marketed under the name Cavallo - Italian for horse - but may also be referred to as Pferd in German or Basashi in Japanese.

Families are also ordering direct and one Victorian last year placed the biggest order, half a horse, to be shipped frozen from WA.

"We sell it all over the country . . . we've got a huge Australian clientele," Mr Garreffa said.

Horse has been seen as a traditional delicacy in French, Italian, Russian, German, Japanese and some south Asian cultures but has been met with controversy in Australia and other Western countries where the horse is seen as an intelligent pet and sporting animal.

Mr Garreffa said he processed about 500kg a month - or 20 horses a year - for the Australian human consumption market, compared with thousands of horses that are slaughtered for pet food and hides.

The horses he butchered, under inspection by government health officials, were agisted for up to 12 months prior to being processed and "treated like kings", he said.

Mr Garreffa said publicity when he first began processing horse meat in 2010 generated about 4000 "nasty" emails to him from all over the globe, including several death threats, but things had quietened down now.

At least two other Australian abattoirs slaughtered horses for export to 17 destinations for human consumption and Mr Garreffa said it was hypocritical to accept a foreign market but condemn domestic consumers.