Is hippophagy a taboo in constant evolution?

Abstract

Contact: s.leteux@yahoo.fr Abstract Food choice is strongly determined by religious and cultural elements specific to each civilization. Numerous food prescriptions concern meat, beginning with the total or partial ban on meat. Among the numerous animal species concerned by religious or cultural prohibitions, horse meat occupies an original place because the ban on its consumption varies a lot according to places and times. Widely consumed in Eurasia in the Prehistory, horse meat is still eaten by many in the big steppes of Central Asia while hippophagy has declined in Western Europe, for reasons which seem more connected to a new social status having more to do with medieval nobiliary values than religious prohibitions. Some non-horse-eating countries such as Japan from the end of the 19th Century became hippophagic for the sake of western modernity or after the introduction of horse by the Europeans as in Chile or Argentina. On the contrary, countries with English and Germanic culture, formerly hippophagic, gave up the consumption of horse meat massively in the 20th Century, except in times of food shortage (World War II in particular). The study of the French case shows the importance of the veterinary and positivist propaganda in the legalization of hippophagy in 1866, in the context of the industrial revolution and strong meat need for the emerging working class. The decline in labour values and the deindustrialization since the 1970s have come along rather logically with a steep decline in hippophagy.

Full text

1
Is hippophagy a taboo in constant evolution?
Sylvain Leteux
University of Lille 3, IRHIS, Lille (France)
Contact: s.leteux@yahoo.fr
Abstract
Food choice is strongly determined by religious and cultural elements specific to each
civilization. Numerous food prescriptions concern meat, beginning with the total or partial
ban on meat. Among the numerous animal species concerned by religious or cultural
prohibitions, horse meat occupies an original place because the ban on its consumption
varies a lot according to places and times. Widely consumed in Eurasia in the Prehistory,
horse meat is still eaten by many in the big steppes of Central Asia while hippophagy has
declined in Western Europe, for reasons which seem more connected to a new social status
having more to do with medieval nobiliary values than religious prohibitions. Some non-
horse-eating countries such as Japan from the end of the 19th Century became hippophagic
for the sake of western modernity or after the introduction of horse by the Europeans as in
Chile or Argentina. On the contrary, countries with English and Germanic culture, formerly
hippophagic, gave up the consumption of horse meat massively in the 20th Century, except
in times of food shortage (World War II in particular). The study of the French case shows
the importance of the veterinary and positivist propaganda in the legalization of hippophagy
in 1866, in the context of the industrial revolution and strong meat need for the emerging
working class. The decline in labour values and the deindustrialization since the 1970s have
come along rather logically with a steep decline in hippophagy.
Keywords: Horse, Meat, Hippophagy, Food taboo, Neophobia.

2
1. Introduction
In 1992, anthropologist François Poplin wrote an
article that was provocatively entitled "Horse, the
shameful meat", in which he mentioned that in
France horse meat was available as minced meat
so that it could not be identified in order to be
appropriate : "You can’t see any bones or skin, it
will not reveal its identity" (Poplin, 1992: 30).
Humans will only consume horse meat after
transforming it completely so as to forget the
animal. According to François Poplin, "these bends,
these dodgings, and the dissimulation behind the
beef, don’t allow horse meat to have a real status
in meat culture" (Poplin, 1992: 31). Horse meat
clearly seems to have a different status compared
to other types of meat that are consumed by
human beings. Speaking about a fear of horsemeat
might be excessive because fear is a survival
mecanism to something specific such as pain or
danger. Nevertheless, there is a phobia, an
absolute disgust for some food in many cultures.
Has there always been a horse taboo? Is it present
in all cultures? Firstly, the issue of hippophagy shall
be investigated by comparing historical and
geographical elements and secondly. We would
like to show that the phobia of horsemeat, which
can be extremely violent when linked to a feeling
of unacceptable stain, is first and foremost
determined by social and cultural reasons. That’s
why we offer a non-exhaustive study of the status
of horsemeat in different places at different
periods of time. Finally, we will focus on the French
situation in the 19th and 20th centuries and see
that a food taboo can change not only in the long
term but also in the short run. As France is to be
found between countries of Mediterranean
tradition and Anglo-Saxon countries, it is
interesting to its situation. Indeed, the evolution of
hippophagy there has been very different from
that of its European neighbors. Studying the
French situation might enable us to understand
why some regions deeply marked by
industrialization in the 19th century (England on
the one hand, Belgium and Northern France on the
other hand) have adopted poles apart behaviors as
far as horsemeat is concerned.
2. Horse meat consumption around the world
Hippophagy is not the same all around the world.
Moreover areas where horse meat is produced are
not necessarily those where the meat is consumed.
Country
Production in
2004
(metric tons)
Consumption in
2004
(metric tons)I
China
420 000
420 300
Mexico
78 880
83 200
Italy
45 000
65 950
Kazakhstan
56 300
56 210
France
6 860
25 380
Argentina
55 600
22 190
Mongolia
40 000
21 160
Australia
21 280
19 180
Kyrgyzstan
18 000
18 920
Brazil
21 200
680
Let’s start with the countries where horsemeat is
not only accepted but also appreciated. Russia
(especially Iakoutia), Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan,
Mongolia, China and Japan are regular horse meat-
eating countries. Anthropologist Carole Ferret
mentions that "in the very centre of Asia, turkish-
speaking people, who were considered famous
riders, see horse meat as the most prestigious
meat — whether they be Muslims or not" (Ferret,
2010). There is no hippophagic taboo in Iakoutia:
"Iakoute horses are widely used because of their
strength for work but first of all they have become
animals designed for meat consumption".
Japanese people eat more than 5500 tons of horse
meat (called basashi) every year. Raw horse meat
is a traditional dish in the Nagano area: it is called
sakura-niku because the red colour of the horse
meat reminds one of cherry blossoms (called
sakura). This behaviour started during the Meiji
Era, at the end of the 19th Century, under the
influence of the Western culture (Cobbi, 1989: 41).
On the contrary, many other cultures consider
horsemeat an abomination, very often on religious
grounds. There is a persistent rejection of
horsemeat amongst gypsies. As for Israel the
I
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippophagie (accessed
June 3rd, 2011).

3
reason is religious and divine: horsemeat being
forbidden by Jewish law because the horse is not a
ruminant, nor does it have cloven hooves. In
Islamic law, horses are generally considered
makruh, i.e. the meat is not haram (forbidden) but
eating it is strongly discouraged. In Sunni Islam, Al-
Bukhari reports that Muhammad forbade the
eating of a donkey, but the general applicability of
this hadith is unclear. Buddhism and Hinduism
prohibit hippophagy (Farb and Armelagos, 1985:
194).
Horse eating is still taboo in English-speaking
countries like the UK, Ireland, the USA, Australia or
Canada but also in Africa, India, etc… In the United
States, selling and consuming horse meat is illegal
in California and Illinois while horse slaughtering is
legal if it is to make animal food. However, horse
meat was sold in the United States during World
War II, since beef was expensive, rationed and
destined for the troops. In Canada, horsemeat is
legal, but the only market — which is not very
broad — is the French-speaking province of
Quebec, where the taboo is not so strong, and a
few (mostly French) restaurants in Canada. Canada
exports some 14 500 tons of horsemeat every
year, mainly to France and Japan.
In Europe there is a discrepancy between Latin
countries, where people are more or less
hippophagic, and Anglo-Saxon countries (Great-
Britain and Ireland) where people dislike
horsemeat. All the Anglo-Saxon countries export
horse meat to foreign markets. In the United
Kingdom, this strong taboo includes banning
horsemeat from commercial pet food and DNA
testing of some types of salami suspected of
containing donkey meat.
Nevertheless, horses and donkeys were eaten in
Great Britain, particularly in Yorkshire, till 1930s
II
.
Consumption in Italy is twice as large as in France.
The Daily Mail considers an account of around
100 000 living horses or carcasses being yearly
transported in the European Union to be eaten in
France, Belgium or other (Scandinavia in
particular)
III
. In France hippophagic consumption
(2% of the whole meat) is concentrated around
Paris and the Nord-Pas de Calais.
II
Matthew Fort, Eating Up Italy: Voyages on a Vespa,
2005, p. 253.
III
Rawstone, "The English horses being sent to France to
be eaten", Daily Mail, May 19th 2007.
Germany has long been well known in feeling a
dislike for horsemeat. Nevertheless horse
butcher’s shops took off sooner than in France, in
traditional horse-riding areas, such as eastern
Prussia. Switzerland is another interesting example
of mix, at the fringe of Latin and Germanic
countries. Romanic French-speaking people feel
quite the same attraction to hippophagy as in
France or Italy. German-speaking people are more
cautious in the doing, but it is opening out.
Scandinavian countries are traditionally
hippophagic. In Denmark, hippophagy has strongly
declined. Horsemeat was considered a food for
prisoners and poor persons. The slaughter of the
horse was considered impure: it was confided to a
caste of knackers, considered as "untouchables",
the Rakkerne (Delavigne, 2002: 31).
3. Historical trend of this taboo in Europe
During Prehistory horse flesh was somehow a
staple. Archaezoologist Marylène Patou-Mathis
wrote:
"Wild horses were present in the Northern
Hemisphere since the beginning of Paleolithic till
the end of the 19th Century (...). In Europe, during
cold and dry climatic phases, they were even part
of the favorite game of Neanderthal and the first
modern men. On multiple occasions herds of wild
horses were hunted by beating and ambush as in
the narrow valley below the famous Roche de
Solutré (Saône-et-Loire). This extensive hunting
continued until the beginning of the Neolithic
period. Horse was domesticated around 3500 BD,
not for its flesh (meat was supplied by other wild
and domesticated animals), but for traction and
carriage (a horse can carry four times more than a
man). Very soon, horses became animals to be
ridden, then hunting and war assistants. Not
everybody ate horse flesh. For example, it was
eaten by the Francs, only if it didn’t result from a
mangy horse, but it was not eaten by Goths who
considered horse as a noble animal" (Patou-
Mathis, 2009: 95).
Even if there might have been some competition
between the alimentary use and the utilitarian use
of horses, hippophagy was nonetheless present in
numerous Pre-historic civilizations. Numerous
tribes in the ancient times ate horsemeat, as
Frederick Simoons stresses:
"Horse sacrifice and eating go back to the very
roots of the Indo-European experience. This is
consistent with abundant evidence from Copper,
Bronze, and Iron Age burials and art of peoples
believed to be Indo-European, as well as from

4
written records of early Indo-Europeans from
Western Europe to Scythia, which bear rich
testimony to the sacrifice of horses to deceased
persons and to gods, to the special association the
horse enjoyed with various deities, and to the
eating of horsemeat. In Europe, horse eating
and/or sacrifice were found among early Indo-
Europeans in the Ukraine, Russia, Scandinavia,
Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, Greece, and
elsewhere. At some times and places, horseflesh
was a sacrificial food. At others, it seems to have
been an ordinary food. In either case, crushed or
fragmented bones and skulls of horses are found in
various Bronze Age sites in Central and Eastern
Europe, most animals apparently eaten after they
were no longer useful for riding, packing, and
traction" (Simoons, 1994: 180).
It is interesting to note that the current
hippophagic culture of some countries have very
old roots, as in Russia. There are some areas in the
world which have always been hyppophagic, long
before the industrial revolution and the birth of a
working class. "In northern Europe, horse killing
and eating are well documented for the early Slavs,
and for the initial period of Slavic civilization, in
Russia and elsewhere, horsemeat is described as a
typical food" (Simoons, 1994: 183).
One of the problems concerning the measure of
how widespread hippophagy used to be is due to
the link between hippophagy and religion. Among
early Germanic peoples, "horse flesh was eaten in
sacrificial dinners. There is also abundant evidence
of horse burial in Scandinavia and elsewhere
among Germanic peoples. (...) In various
prehistoric sites in Ireland, horse bones have been
found along with bones of other animals, to
confirm the eating of horseflesh there. Some
horseflesh may have become available when
horses were killed for eating, whereas other
horseflesh became available on ritual occasions"
(Simoons, 1994: 185).
Simoons hints at a link between reluctance for
hippophagy among Romans and Christian
prohibition published in 732 AD. "Though horse
sacrifice did occur in Greece and Rome, people
there seem to have ignored completely the horse
as food, apart from using its products as medicine.
Indeed, the Romans were disgusted with the idea
of eating horses, and did so only when there was
no alternative but starvation. These attitudes seem
to have been taken over the Catholic church, and
with the introduction of Christianity to northern
Europe, pressure was exerted to eliminate horse
eating along with other pagan customs. In some
cases, the pressure was subtle: the Penitential of
Archbishop Ecbert ruled that horseflesh was not
prohibited, but added, in what like a hint, that
many families would not buy it. In time, however,
the strict view prevailed, and the Catholic church
made a serious attempt to stamp out the practice.
In Ireland in the ninth Century, for example, a
handbook for use by confessors required that
horse eaters do penance for three and half years.
(...) Pope Gregory III ordered Boniface, apostle of
the Germans, to forbid the eating of horseflesh,
which he had tolerated until that time (732).
Boniface did not succeed at once, for he later
wrote to Pope Zachary I, who succeeded Gregory,
that horse eating remained a barrier to conversion.
In any case, all groups that were subsequently
converted were also pressured to give up the
practice" (Simoons, 1994: 187).
In 732, Pope Gregory III instructed Saint Boniface
to suppress the pagan practice of eating horses,
calling it a "filthy and abominable custom
IV
". His
edicts are based on the same scripture as the
Jewish prohibitions and this ban remained until the
18th Century. The christianization of Iceland in
1000 AD was achieved only when the Church
promised that Icelanders could continue to eat
horsemeat; once the Church had consolidated its
power, the allowance was discontinued.
Horsemeat is still popular in Iceland and is sold and
consumed in the same way as beef, lamb and pork.
Historian François Sigaut questions the vulgate on
the so-called ban on hippophagy by pope Grégoire
III in 732. To him, this prohibition was a made-up
story (Sigaut, 1992). Medievalist Alain Dierkens
states that the condemning horse consumption
should not be linked to religious standards but
rather to the development of the nobiliary and
military values, which gradually bring respect for
the horse (Dierkens, 2008). The papal letters of 732
and 751 are not normative documents and they
come from bishops of Greek origin (Gregory III and
Zachary I). In the Oriental Church and for some
rigorous clerks, certain dietary restrictions of the
Old Testament were maintained during the High
Middle Ages. "We kept a sufficient number of
explicit texts to be able to assert that horse meat
consumption did not raise major doctrinal
problems in the Carolingian Empire" Alain Dierkens
concludes.
If hippophagy was "officially" prohibited in 732 AD
by the Roman Catholic Church, the thing was
recurrent during the whole Middle-Age
V
: "Horse
eating persists nevertheless, and horse flesh was
IV
For more details about the place of the horse in the
Germanic paganism, see Marc-André Wagner (2005).
V
For more details, see Madeleine Ferrières (2007: 444-
445).

5
still appreciated in European pasture areas. In
Switzerland, Christian monks still ate horse during
the 11th Century, in spite of the papal ban,
promulgated four centuries before. Irish people
too infringed this prohibition. Feasts of equine
meat were still organized in Denmark during the
16th Century. In Spain, it is under the name of "red
deer" that foals were eaten, whereas horsemeat
was regularly used to feed crews in the Navy" (Farb
and Armelagos, 1985: 195). Ghislaine Bouchet adds
that the horse flesh trade was forbidden during the
18th Century, but illicit trading came to light now
and then, and numerous decrees were issued (19
mars 1762; 31 mars 1790).
Nowadays a great part of the European people
loathe horsemeat, but it is considered as edible
food : "The horse appears as such in the books
which list edible and uneatable foodstuffs,
together with the donkey, the mule or, in a more
exotic way, the reindeer, the bear and the rat. (...)
The English encyclopaedists who consider the
consumption of frogs' legs or snails as a heresy and
a moral scandal, do not need to call upon the pope
or upon the law to justify their abstention"
(Ferrières, 2007: 445). A witness says how delicious
the taste of horsemeat is: "In the 18th Century, an
antique dealer of Thurnaw (Bamberg), member of
the royal Science Society of London, Jean-George
Keysler (1689-1743) protested strongly against this
prejudice, which was deprived of any foundation,
and wondered that a meat so delicious was not
appreciated and was always prohibited" (Bouchet,
1993: 219).
4. Acceptance of horse eating in France: To what
extent is the notion of pleasure present in the
promotion of horsemeat consumption in France?
After this brief study of the phobia of horsemeat in
different cultures throughout centuries, I suggest
we focus on the French situation in the 19th and
20th centuries to see how a food taboo can wear
off and come back very quickly in a hundred years
only. We will also study the French contemporary
situation since it is interesting to notice that the
taste of horsemeat - very often obscured in the
books dealing with hippophagy – can finally be
tackled.
In France, horsemeat was eaten from time to time
during breaking events: the French Revolution,
Napoleonic campaigns, the Siege of Paris (1870-
1871), but it was not a choice for food. The
Cambacérès case in 1839 marks an evolution in the
minds. The setting up of a horse slaughtering place
in the St-Denis plain put an end to the illicit cutting
up of carcasses in Montfaucon. A statement from
the Conseil d’Etat in 1841 concluded in favor of a
slaughtering installation, allowing the selling of
cooked horsemeat to feed pigs. The sanitary
council in Paris approved
VI
.
During the Restoration (1815-1830) hippophagy
supporters struggled over moral intentions
VII
.
Three public health specialists were heading the
movement: the physician Alexandre Jean-Baptiste
Parent-Duchâtelet (1790-1836), zoologist Isidore
Geoffroy St-Hilaire (1805-1861) and the military
veterinary Emile Decroix (1821-1901). Their
arguments were laid down as follows:
* Sanitary arguments: Horse meat does not raise
more sanity risks than any other meat. It is rich in
iron (near of 4 mg for 100 g of meat), and even
recommended in certain cases. Heme iron is more
suitable and easily absorbed than others from
different origins: vegetables, eggs, and dairy
products. During the 19th Century, physicians
recommended eating horsemeat in case of
melancholy or persisting weariness. When raw
beef was found dangerous because of the taenia,
before the Great War they said raw horsemeat
came safe: "The Assistance Publique (Welfare
services) gave the example and the hospitals
generally, and sanatoriums in particular, became
important consumers of horsemeat, while it also
became fashionable to give it to the children
considered delicate, and in times of tuberculosis
danger they all were, some raw meat bought, if
possible, directly from the slaughterhouse"
(Guillaume, 1994: 313).
* Social argument: Horse meat was cheap and
suitable to feed the poor and the working classes.
* Ethical argument: If the horse was valuable and
useful after its working life (ploughing, riding, and
carrying) its owner would not ill-treat it, to
preserve the animal value before it was
slaughtered. So the SPA (Society for the prevention
of cruelty to animals, created in 1845) backed up
the hippophagic cause.
What about the taste of the food?
In 1861, Isidore Geoffroy St-Hilaire recalled the
antiquated notions: "For a long time horsemeat
was considered as sweetish, unpleasant to the
taste, very hard and, as a matter of fact, difficult to
eat. Even today, most people think and say it is
VI
Rapport du Conseil d'Etat d'avril 1841. Bibliothèque
Historique de la Ville de Paris, Ms CP 4819.
VII
For more details, see Sylvain Leteux (2005).

6
such" (Geoffroy St-Hilaire, 1861: 132). He stated
that horsemeat "is acknowledged as good by the
most different peoples in their ways of living and
the most diverse races: Negro, Mongolian, Malay,
American, Caucasian". Sometimes deceitfully
presented as deer, "it was also declared as such by
all those who subjected it to quality tests, by all
those who have tasted it in adequate conditions,
that is stale enough and issued from healthy and
rested horses. It is then excellent roasted, and if it
is not so good boiled, it is precisely because it
makes one of the best stock, the best maybe,
which we know. And it was even found good when
it came (...) from animals that had not been
fattened and aged sixteen, nineteen, twenty or
even twenty three years old". He however
acknowledged that the horsemeat is "undeniably
tasty, without being however as good as that of
beef or fattened lamb" (Geoffroy St-Hilaire, 1861:
134).
According to Alexandre Dumas, "horse meat is not
exactly bad, but needs to be strongly flavored; and
especially to be eaten without prejudices
VIII
". The
article entitled "Horse" in his Dictionnaire de
cuisine (1873) is instructive:
"Eating horse meat is a proverbial expression
which means eating an indeed very hard meat:
horse meat is more tightened than beef. It is red,
oily. Although it is very nitrogenous and
consequently very nourishing, it is very doubtful
that it could ever be part of daily food
consumption. M. de Saint-Hilaire tried in vain with
his horse meat feasts to establish definitively this
animal in the Parisian butcher's shops; it is likely
that the noble animal which man associates with
his military glory will be used for food only in
special circumstances like blockade and famine. As
long as the horse will not be raised, fed or
manured like the ox, in order to be eaten, it will
have to be served on the table only in difficult
times. Only then, you can say that horse meat and
beef are similar, and then you can prepare it as you
want or as you can".
Nowadays savour and taste is put forward by the
horsemeat industry: "Horse meat possesses a
unique sweet flavour due to the presence of
glycogen in the muscle that is more important than
in other meats. All the amateurs will say it, what
characterizes it best is its extreme tenderness due
to the process of unique maturation that softens
its muscular fibers. Its texture, always delicious and
tender, is appreciated as much by small amateurs
as big meat connoisseurs. The gourmets and the
VIII
Alexandre Dumas (1873), "Boucher", Dictionnaire de
cuisine.
purists agree to say that the Tartar is only equine,
but horsemeat also cooks according to numerous
recipes. It is then preferable to prepare it rare. It
must be seized, whatever the type of cooking is
wished (roasted, grilled, braised)
IX
".
Hippophagic banquets were set up in Germany in
1842 and in France in 1855. Hippophagy was made
legal in France in 1866. "France was then late on
the other European countries, where the sale was
authorized: Austria, Germany, Belgium, Denmark,
and Switzerland. In Berlin, the first horse butcher's
shop appeared in 1847" (Bouchet, 1993: 220).
Between 1870 and 1960 in France hippophagy
took off, following the increasing of urban working
classes, but it declined in the years 1960-70.
Horses were not used in ploughing or carrying, and
cars, lorries, traction-engines were put in the place
of them. It was necessary to import carcasses from
abroad to meet the demand. Ethnologist Jean-
Pierre Digard, specialist of the taming of the horse,
indeed summarizes the situation:
"At the beginning of the 1970s, with the aim of
saving the draught races of the agricultural
collapse, the French administration of Stud farms
wanted to go further into the way of the horse
eating and led a campaign, active but debated, to
set up a complete "horsemeat sector" and try a
reconversion of these races in races with meat. An
equine breeding directed to the butcher's shop
existed already more or less in countries like
Belgium, Holland, French-speaking Switzerland or
Northern Italy, where horse eating had settled
down in the food customs (...). One and a half
century after the horse campaigns of the mid-19th
Century and in front of the rise of new popular
sensibilities opposed to hippophagy, horse
butchery shows evident signs of a long-lasting,
maybe irreversible crisis today which could indeed
be fatal. And so in France, in spite of an active
politicy of support, the consumption of horsemeat
has fallen in a continuous way from 90 000 tons in
1970 to 60 000 tons in 1990 then to 30 000 tons in
2000, entailing a collapse from the 45 000 ton
production in 1970 to 11 000 tons in 1990 and 13
000 tons in 2000 (a revival due to the crisis of the
ESB on the bovine meat), the deficit being filled by
imports of live horses from Poland and in the form
of carcasses mainly from Argentina and the USA.
As a result horsemeat suffers from an additional
handicap: it has become an expensive meat.
Western hippophagy could thus be limited to a
short interlude - one and a half century-, from
IX
Dossier de presse du CIV (Centre d'information des
viandes) sur la viande chevaline.

7
which draught races may come out still a little
more weakened" (Digard, 2004: 183).
The sanitary quality of horsemeat has dimmed
since the 1960s : " If the horse meat benefits from
a healthy image connected to its deep red color,
this image was tarnished by the epidemics of
trichinose in particular in Paris (in 1976, 1985,
1993). Actually, horses are sensitive to this
parasitosis which can be transmitted to Man
through the ingestion of minced or under-cooked
meat, which is its common mode of consumption.
Considering this possible sanitary risk, and by
virtue of the precautionary principle, not yet
considered as such, the Conseil supérieur de
l'hygiène forbade in 1967 horsemeat in schools
and university canteens. Children and young
people do not get used to eating it. Besides, a
decree of September 1989 forbade the sale of pre-
cooked horsemeat. All these elements entailed a
fall of the consumption, aggravated still by the
changes in tastes, horsemeat being judged too flat
or too bitter" (Hubscher, 2004: 149).
Since 1866 horsemeat trading has played a
subordinate part in France for the meat has to be
sold in specific horse-butcher shops and not in the
same place as other meat (beef, veal, pork).
Caterers in France, obviously, do not provide
horsemeat in the restaurants, whereas they do in
Italy and Switzerland. On the other hand
horsemeat is authorized in local communities in
France. The selling of horsemeat has been
authorized in supermarkets for some years. But in
2008, January, the French SPA sent a
memorendum to the supermarkets to invite them
to take away horsemeat from their departments
because of the « brutality of transport and the
state in which horses arrive at the
slaughterhouse". They added: « At first loved and
cared for, whatever its merits, the good horse
won't know a peaceful retreat: from the first
failure, it becomes fresh meat and will be driven to
the slaughterhouse overnight ». After what
Champion and Casino pledged they will no more
offer to buy such a meat.
Fighter for the cause, the interference of animal
protecting associations can explain the bias against
hippophagy. People are prone to consider horse as
a pet. Horse transport and slaughtering are
insufferable in the minds of many. The Brigitte
Bardot Foundation (since 1986) has led striking
operations to this aim (spots on French television
in 1994 and 2007, placards in the underground and
the RER). So the moral taboo against which health
specialists struggled hard in the 19th Century is
being revived.
References
Barclay, H.B. (1980), The Role of the Horse in Man’s
Culture, London: J.A. Allen.
Bouchet, G. (1993), Le cheval à Paris de 1850 à
1914, Genève: Droz.
Cazes-Valette, G. (2008), Les déterminants du
rapport à la viande chez le mangeur français
contemporain, Thèse d'ethnologie, EHESS.
Cobbi, J. (1989), "L'évolution du comportement
alimentaire au Japon", Économie rurale, 190,
pp. 41-45.
Delavigne, A.-E. (2002), "Le système des viandes au
Danemark: goûts et dégoûts pour la viande en
fonction de l'espèce animale", Anthropozoologica,
35, pp. 29-37.
Dierkens, A. (2008), "Réflexions sur l'hippophagie
au Haut Moyen Age", Viandes et sociétés: les
consommations ordinaires et extra-ordinaires,
HASRI, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, Paris.
Digard, J.-P. (2004), Une histoire du cheval: art,
techniques, société, Arles: Actes Sud.
Dumas, A. (1873), Le grand dictionnaire de cuisine,
Paris: H. Veyrier.
Farb, P. and Armelagos, G. (1985), Anthropologie
des coutumes alimentaires, Paris: Denoël.
Ferret, C. (2010), "Hippophiles et hippophages",
Anthropozoologica, 45, pp. 115-135.
Ferrières, M. (2007), Nourritures canailles, Paris:
Seuil.
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, I. (1861), Acclimatation et
domestication des animaux utiles, Paris: Librairie
agricole.
Guillaume, P. (1994), "Succès et déboires de
l'hippophagie à la Belle Epoque", De Pégase à
Jappeloup: cheval et société, Festival d'histoire de
Montbrison.
Hubscher, R. (2004), "Nourrir le peuple:
l'hippophagie à Paris au XIXe siècle", Elevages
d'hier, élevage d'aujourd'hui: mélanges
d'ethnozootechnie offerts à Bernard Denis, Rennes:
Presses Universitaires de Rennes.

8
Leteux, S. (2005), "L’hippophagie en France : la
difficile acceptation d’une viande honteuse",
Terrains et Travaux, 9, pp. 143-158.
Patou-Mathis, M. (2009), Mangeurs de viande, de
la Préhistoire à nos jours, Paris: Perrin.
Poplin, F. (1992), "Le cheval, viande honteuse",
Ethnozootechnie, 48, pp. 23-34.
Sigaut, F. (1992), "La viande de cheval a-t-elle été
interdite par l’Eglise ?", Ethnozootechnie, 48, pp.
43-48.
Simoons, F. (1994), Eat not this flesh, Food
avoidances from prehistory to the present,
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
Wagner, M.-A. (2005), Le cheval dans les croyances
germaniques: paganisme, christianisme et
traditions, Paris: H. Champion.