it's a fantastic example of a cultural taboo that I think is limited to the English speaking world. I've had horse a few times in central Europe, it's an acceptable food in most of the world.
It's taboo in Scandinavia as well or at least it used to be. Traditionally slaughtering horses was the job of the nightmen who also collected waste from latrines and assisted the executioner. Only the poor would eat horse meat. I've heard a theory that the taboo is rooted in Christian suppression of pagan horse sacrifices where the meat was consumed ritually.
Today the taboo seems to have been relaxed. Horse meat has mostly disappeared from the shops so people don't have much of a relationship to it anymore. Although many would still be uncomfortable eating horse meat, many has started to see it as an exotic specialty rather than a taboo food.
Horses occupy a strange space between pet and farm animal. White people get about 30% as mad at the prospect of horse meat as they do over dog meat.
Im not vegan or anything but I do find it funny that we will shame people for eating dogs while slamming down some pork and beef like it’s nothing
In the US, we used to feed horse meat to dogs. That's what canned dog food used to be until 60s or 70s. It was outlawed though. The US and UK don't have much of a history of eating horse. There was probably a lot of it happening during the Depression but I think it's outlawed in most states, if not all. There's some European country that eats horse, not sure which though.
probably lobbied for by other meat producers to eliminate competition
I remember there was a big scandal about IKEA frozen meatballs having horse meat in them a few years back. I had them both before and after they changed them, and they were better when they were horse.
