Australia's first butcher to sell horse meat said yesterday he had received death threats and over 2,000 abusive e-mails, but that customers were delighted they could now buy horse steaks.

Perth butcher Vince Garreffa became the nation's first legal retailer of horse meat on Tuesday after years of campaigning to get a long-standing ban lifted.

"(There) were the only two that brought fear to me," he said between serving customers, saying the threats could be the work of "a couple of over-passionate animal liberationists or pet lovers".

One threat had been so alarming he said he had referred it to the authorities. Police said they were not able to comment. Mr Garreffa said his butcher shop sells "probably every meat you can imagine that is legal," and put much of the opposition down to ignorance.

"The moment I remind (opponents) that Australia has been selling 50 to 70,000 horses a year to the rest of the world for human consumption, 95 per cent of them fall over backwards and die of shock and are so embarrassed that they didn't know their facts."