Horsemeat as human food in France

Abstract

The acceptance of horsemeat as an appealing food for humans is one of the few documented cases of a change in attitude from aversion to qualified approval of a meat. From a taboo with religious and sentimental connotations, there evolved the notion that horsemeat was intrinsically unclean and then unhealthy. Resistance to hippophagy was abandoned during food shortage crises in France, and this eroded the prejudice against it in normal times. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the hygienic, therapeutic, culinary, economic and social arguments for hippophagy crystallized thanks to previous acceptance in other European countries, a promotional crusade and commercial segregation. By 1910 France had become the horseflesh center of the Western world. Hippophagy in France has remained urban‐centered and working class oriented. Even though no more than a third of Frenchmen eat it, changing sources and reliability of supply, rising prices and shifting consumer habits suggest that use of this meat has reached its peak.