Why do we finding eating some animals acceptable and not others? Why is this different in different cultures?
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First: vermin. If an animal is widely considered to carry disease/is dangerous to have around/is just dirty, we don’t eat it. For the Western world, that would be things like rats, mice, and cockroaches. You don’t want them in your mouth; you just want them *gone*. For cultures, this often extends to things that *look* like vermin. Lobster was, early on, considered inedible and fit only for criminals. There were regulations to prevent it from being served daily to prisoners and servants. All because it looked like a giant sea bug. Lobster is a good example of changing taboos, because as it became rarer and we developed the ability to transport it inland without rotting, the allure of the expensive and exotic coastal food kicked in.
Second: Religion. This often ties into the above, because many religious restrictions were meant to prevent disease. Pig carries trichinosis. Dogs were widely considered “dirty” for many years (not surprising- have you seen what dogs will eat?), and still are in some cases. Others were based on utility, see: Hindu and cows. Cows provide milk, they provide labor, they provide manure. If you kill your cows, you kill next year’s harvest.
And on that note: utility. You don’t eat an animal that is better for you alive. Often ties into “religion” because what’s religion but a set of rules to follow. If course you can’t eat cats! If you eat cat, next year you’ll only eat rat! Go apologize to Bast for even considering that, and no we don’t care that you’re hungry.
Finally: Companionship. If the animal is widely considered to be one that has a personal bond with its owner, a taboo on its eating is likely. You can see this clearly with horse meat. In early and up to premodern history, horses were associated with war. They were extensively trained and in medieval times were often loyal to a single knight. In the early 1900s, “man’s noblest companion” was a description used in cavalry recruitment. Even in peace, they were used to pull ploughs- they were a food making animal, not one you ate itself. They were valuable. They had names.
There *was* a surge in horse meat consumption when the industrial revolution kicked off. Suddenly, horses were less needed, less valuable, and there were a lot of poorly-paid starving people who needed cheap meat. A carriage-horse that broke an ankle and was shot in the streets, well, that carriage horse was brought to the abattoir and parted out.
But wait! The rich still had their companion horses! Are these *poor* people eating *horse* meat? How disgusting. Horse meat being labeled as poverty food put a huge damper on any sort of horsemeat industry in Europe and the US, and any attempts to prop it up met with massive public lashback. Companies were accused of adulterating their beef with horse meat (and some did), buyers were accused of selling horses across the border for slaughter (…and some do). All because the rich liked their pets in both the past and future.
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