14 replies to this topic

[Rhuen]

I have asked this a few times in the past, and it seems the question in our world of health concious eaters and financial food markets are asking the question again.

 

http://finance.yahoo...-155800422.html

 

 

 

In the end why Americans don't eat horses is the same reason we don't eat dogs, cats, and hamsters. Cultural they are viewed as pets. Although under any state's legal standings they are classified as livestock.

[Beorht]

I think there's other animals that are used for food which are simultaneously kept as pets. Rabbits being one. To a lesser extent, chickens being another.

 

Over here with the horsemeat scandal, I think it is largely to do with the fact that eating horse is not entirely culturally acceptable (I mean, you can get horsemeat here) but also due to the fact that people were buying one type of meat and getting another. There's an element of food adulteration and an aversion to mystery meat.

The reason why eating horse isn't seen as being okay is probabably due to their pet status, yes. We don't eat much goat here but it isn't because they're seen as pets. I doubt there would be as much of a scandal if lamb mince had been cut with goat.

[Archangel]

It's Biblical. The prohibition in Deuteronomy 14 against eating animals that do not both "chew the cud" and "split the hoof":

 

"Any animal that divides the hoof and has the hoof split in two and chews that cud, among the animals, that you may eat. Nevertheless, you are not to eat of these among those which chew the cud, or among those that divide the hoof in two; the camel and the rabbit and the [rock badger], for though they chew the cud, they do not divide the hoof; they are unclean for you."

Horses fall in the same category.

 

[Arawan]

There is also the fact that horses have generally viewed as too useful to eat, that's probably why it hasn't been common practice. So you care for a horse and protect it and nurture it and treat it when it's ill. Overtime, an emotional attachment takes place. That's why horses are still romanticized today and why we don't eat them. They're not food but companions. 

[Clearwitch]

Because horses are fruits that don't exist.  You can't eat a figment of your imagination.

[Beorht]

I think it's possible that the pet / companion status of horses may have been a result of the Industrial Revolution when steam engines began to replace the workhorse, particularly in the agricultural sector. And then, later on, the internal combustion engine came about and revolutionized agriculture even further - and provided a new means of transport in the town and cities. What had previously been a beast of burden became more of a hobby.

Edited by Bright One, 24 February 2013 - 05:48 PM.

[AmieNoire]

Well, Italians do. Just as the French eat frogs. In the South, they eat alligator and snapping turtles. In Asia and Africa, different kinds of insects are delicacies (I hear termite queens are extra special). It's all cultural, and habits around food are extremely hard to break.

[Beorht]

I think the Anglo-Saxons might have eaten horse sausage from time to time.

[TheUnknowable]

personally, I'm wondering what dog tastes like.

[Rhuen]

personally, I'm wondering what dog tastes like.

 

 

(like very bad ham mixed with very bad catfish with a gamey after taste and tends to always cook oily)

 

I hear its alot like raccoon meat only nastier with that odd salty fishyness to it like a mix or between ham and fish.

 

*human meat I hear tastes like oversalted pork.

[Beorht]

I've heard that, I've also heard it tastes like veal.

[Rhuen]

I've heard that, I've also heard it tastes like veal.

 

 

{{{dog or human?

[Beorht]

{{{dog or human?

Human.

 

I read it on another forum.

 

Prior to 1931, New York Times reporter William Buehler Seabrook, allegedly in the interests of research, obtained from a hospital intern at the Sorbonne a chunk of human meat from the body of a healthy human killed in an accident, then cooked and ate it. He reported, "It was like good, fully developed veal, not young, but not yet beef. It was very definitely like that, and it was not like any other meat I had ever tasted. It was so nearly like good, fully developed veal that I think no person with a palate of ordinary, normal sensitiveness could distinguish it from veal. It was mild, good meat with no other sharply defined or highly characteristic taste such as for instance, goat, high game, and pork have. The steak was slightly tougher than prime veal, a little stringy, but not too tough or stringy to be agreeably edible. The roast, from which I cut and ate a central slice, was tender, and in color, texture, smell as well as taste, strengthened my certainty that of all the meats we habitually know, veal is the one meat to which this meat is accurately comparable.

 

http://en.wikipedia....nnibalism#1930s

Edited by Bright One, 28 February 2013 - 11:22 PM.

[Rhuen]

that is different, the one I had heard was from cannibals who just cooked it over an open fire. I'd imagine like with any meat the way its cooked influences the flavor.

[NGR]

They just found it in Taco Bell beef here in the UK.

 

Thanks a heap, assholes. You've ruined tacos for me. Of course, the nearest Taco Bell to me is like a 2 hour drive away but still. I can never eat another taco.