Why do people across the world mostly only eat a few of the same types of meat (like chicken, beef, pork) when there are thousands of other animals to choose from?
In: 667
Over time, through trial and error, those were the animals that turned out to be the easiest to domesticate and taste the best.
Because they‘ve been selectively bred for thousands of years to be easy to handle, more or less resistant to plagues and in the end more cost-efficient than any other animal.
Because the cheapest meat comes from domesticated animals and only a handful of species have been domesticated.
These animals had the right mix of characteristics to be suitable for humans to capture, raise them, feed them things we don’t eat, and genetically alter them over the generations. It’s a short list that fits all the criteria.
Because domesticated animals are easier to slaughter in large numbers and those are the animals that have been domesticated the most. I suspect its a bit of a feedback loop.
We domesticated certain animals because they were easiest to demosticate. People got accustomed to those animals so the demand for those meats increased. That demand meant more production of those animals, which leads to more people being accustomed to those meats.
Of course other cultures eat other meats. Horse meat is sold some places. Bison, turkey, goat etc. isnt too hard to come by depending on where you live.
But the big three probably stuck around because they were easiest and cheapest to domesticate.
Typically it is because those animals are both easy to domesticate and provide tangible benefits from domestication.
Cows graze land that is often unsuitable for farming and can also be used to produce milk prior to slaughter for beef.
Pigs are natures garbage disposals and can be fed using the waste food that we ourselves cannot eat.
Chickens are quite small and are easy to keep. They also can provide eggs prior to their own slaughter.
Some other animals fit the bill quite well – like goats and sheep – and are also domesticated and common meats in other cultures. Other animals don’t fit the bill well at all – their ranching would be less positive than other, more easily ranched animals.
In order for an animal to be selected for domestication it has to have a number of characteristics from the start:
* It has to be docile enough to interact with people and live in captivity
* It has to eat something that’s both readily available and not more valuable eaten directly
* It has to reproduce quickly under human direction
Goats may have been one of the first animals domesticated for use as food. They eat grass and plant materials that people can’t eat themselves. Pig eat just about anything and they can put out a litter one or two times a year. Cows make milk and chickens make eggs, so you get a secondary food source without having to kill the animal.
You actually left off two: sheep and goat meat [are quite common](https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-meat-projections-to-2050) globally, just mostly not in the US (where you live, based on your post history).
(Also, unrelated, but the answer to [a post you made a while back](https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueOffMyChest/comments/p0ubfw/22f_people_keep_asking_me_my_pronouns_and_im_sick/) is “most of us aren’t getting offended, but you mostly never notice those because we’re just going about our day and don’t stand out”.)
a) It is almost impossible to domesticate (using low tech) animals that can fly, jump, run very fast or are simply ornery. You also need animals that breed relatively quickly, are easy to feed, produce a good amount of meat (quickly) and are relatively disease resistant. In many regions of the world, this actually only leaves a few types of animals – cows, pigs, goats, sheep and chickens.
b) Hunting is rather energy inefficient, skill intensive, dangerous and not productive. If you can’t domesticate, then the alternative is to hunt. Even in relatively modern times, it isn’t easy to send out a bunch of (typically) men on long, tiring and dangerous hunts only to get enough meat to feed perhaps 10x their number (ie 5 men can hunt enough for 50, for example). Farming is a far less risky and more efficient food production method.
c) Fishing is the more efficient way to obtain animal protein if there are good enough bodies of water nearby. Less dangerous than hunting and more productive.
Ultimately, there simply aren’t “thousands of other animals” to choose from in a practical sense (land based animals)
It’s about cost. In Japan beef is very expensive because we have very little land. So each cow is much more expensive to raise since they take up valuable space. But fish is abundant and so it’s cheap. Sure, we could try to get kangaroo or something but that isn’t native to here so it would be expensive too!
Good news for you:they are planning on reintroducing the wooly mammoth, so maybe we will have a new apparently delicious meat source in our lifetime
Latest Answers