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Comment by bipson | Hacker News Reader

Eating horse meat was very common in central Europe before the big wars.

In WWI and WWII even more so, horses were declared essential for the war in axis countries, and eating them became illegal.

In Italy horse meat picked right up again after WWII, but in Austria and Germany people forgot about the reasons it seems and it stayed unacceptable/frowned upon.

You can find (excellent) horse meat products in western Austria, but the market is tiny, the reaction you get is typically "Eeehwww!".

It is an excellent, very iron rich, lean meat. But since my wife loves horses, I haven't eaten any for many years.

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Eating horse meat in the United Kingdom was seemingly quite common in the United Kingdom prior to 2013 but nobody knew about it[0], when common products were found to contain horse meat and the public reaction turned into a huge story / scandal and most people in the UK would have the same ewww reaction.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_horse_meat_scandal

Oh, that same scandal went through all of Europe.

But the "ewww"-effect came mostly from the mislabeling part.

It wasn’t just a huge scandal for the “ewww” factor but mostly due to the fact that the horse was not part of the traceable supply chain and thus could have come from anywhere, could have contained any number of contaminants/hormones/banned substances, the horses could have been mistreated in violation of ethical standards, etc.

German here, horse meat isn't very hard to find. It's not commonly sold in stores, but it's everything but unacceptable.

I can confirm that. You can get it from specialised butchers, often at weekly markets.

In Cologne the classical Sauerbraten ( the most famous meat dish in the region) is from horse meat. I live in a house in Karlsruhe and the last business on the ground floor was a horse butcher. Germany, however, has become the land of mass produced meat, which can be done with pigs much easier. Horse meat is an expensive niche product.

Horse meat is not unusual in Japan.

https://tabelog.com/rstLst/?vs=1&sa=&sk=%25E9%25A6%25AC%25E8...

American McGee's studio, Spicy Horse, is named after a menu item he saw in Shanghai.

Shanghai, Japan

In Sweden horsemeat used to be sold commonly in supermarkets everywhere as thinly sliced sandwich charcuterie. Interestingly it’s called “hamburger-meat”.

The last 10 or so years I’ve noticed it’s gradually disappeared from Stockholm stores.

If you have a craving: Many of the various kinds of salamis from Kotivara (Finnish) have horse meat in them, including the very nice pepperoni one:

https://www.kotivara.se/vara-salamis/salamis/pepperonisalami...

That looks yummie. It would be perfect if they would combine this with some of this https://organicestonia.ee/en/member/must-kuuslauk-black-garl...

It would even be more perfect if they had the option to switch to English, and send to Germany, like that site.

Restaurant Bergamott has horse filet if you're interested.

It's still available in one of the largest supermarket chains (willys)

My grand mother stopped eating horse meat after WW2, because rwally bad horse meat was the only meat she got during the war.

Horse is actually among the stuff I want to try one day, along with swan.

Check Mongolian barbecues near you (if any) - I've found some relatively exotic meats there from time to time.

We still eat Pferdeleberkäse in Vienna, so I have to disagree with you there.

In Italy, at least in South, horse meat is still being consumed today.

At least in Venice we still eat, for example, frayed dry horse meat ("sfilacci di cavallo"), which is more difficult to find in Rome, where I now live.

Last Christmas I bought by mistake a horse sopressa[0] thinking it was pork and bought it down to Rome. My in-laws were surprised to say the least :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopressa

as a Roman can confirm.

I don't eat horse meat myself but my girlfriend loves it and it's really hard to find it in Rome.

Traditional cuisine here is mostly about ovine meat, lamb mostly ("abbacchio")

There's a typical roman food "coppiete" that was traditionally made with dried horse meat (similar to beef jerky) but nowadays the pork meat version is much more popular.

Don't know why exactly.

Strangely enough horse meat is a favorite for many of my roman friends, even though it's not easy to get it.

Not only in the south, in Emilia Romagna it is common enough, as an example, and though not common, it can be found in Tuscany and Umbria with a minimum of effort.

> the reaction you get is typically "Eeehwww!

i understand when people react that way to eating dog or smth, but horses and cows are same family of animald

> but horses and cows are same family of animal

How do you mean? They're not, taxonomically.

The family of "big and eats grass" I guess.

‘Family’ doesn’t really have a defined meaning in modern taxonomy. Horses and cows are part of the same clade, ‘ungulata’ - hooved mammals. It’s not a Linnaean taxonomic ally ‘ranked’ clade though, like an ‘order’ or a ‘genus’ - but those terms aren’t really that formally valid, so using ‘family’ informally to mean ‘clade with some reasonable level of shared characteristics’ seems fair.

But to also be fair, if you want to classify horses and cows as edible based on their shared common ancestry, you’re also arguing for eating giraffes, tapirs, rhinos, hippos, whales and dolphins.

You can just look this stuff up on wikipedia...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_(biology) "Family (Latin: familia, plural familiae) is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between order and genus."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equidae "Equidae (sometimes known as the horse family) is the taxonomic family of horses and related animals, including the extant horses, donkeys, and zebras, and many other species known only from fossils."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovidae "The Bovidae comprise the biological family of cloven-hoofed, ruminant mammals that includes cattle, bison, buffalo, antelopes, and goat-antelopes. A member of this family is called a bovid."

No, horses and cattle are not in the same family. Nor are they in the same clade; cattle are artiofabula, (ruminants) horses are mesaxonia. (odd toed ungulates) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artiofabula https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesaxonia

> But to also be fair, if you want to classify horses and cows as edible based on their shared common ancestry, you’re also arguing for eating giraffes, tapirs, rhinos, hippos, whales and dolphins.

The argument is about whether horses and cattle are in the same family, not that a species' taxonomic classification can be an indication that they ought to be eaten.

My point is that Linnaeus's 'family' is not rigorously defined and generally not a very precise term anyway. If you're not sure what level of clade a pair of related creatures share, referring to them as being 'in the same family', informally, is fine.

And Ungulata is a clade. "Ungulates (/ˈʌŋɡjəleɪts, -ləts/ UNG-gyə-layts, - ləts) are members of the diverse clade Ungulata which primarily consists of large mammals with hooves."

As a clade, it includes several clades that are historically classified as 'orders' and several that are 'families'. It would be inaccurate to say 'horses and cows are members of the same Linnaean order'; but equally, in Linnaean terms, it would be insufficiently precise to say they share the same Linnaean 'grandorder', because that's also true of, say, a grizzly bear, or a badger.

Basically, if you're going to be taxonomically pedantic, I think it's better to be pedantic about the Actual taxonomy (i.e. the real common ancestry of an organism) than it is to be pedantic about the metataxonomy (i.e., the classification of clades as 'order' or 'family' or 'genus')

I know what you mean, because of those 3 species, dogs are the only ones to be commonly kept as pets. But what is it that puts horses, dogs, and cows in the same/different categories?

I would say a dog being a carnivore puts it in a different category. The same reason I wouldn't want to eat a wolf or a big cat.

This is actually a really good point. Dogs will eat really disgusting food, perusing the trash or eating poop at times.. I wouldn’t eat a raccoon for the same reason. Horses and cattle eat grass, they’re vegan

The bigger issue is that toxins concentrate in carnivores in a way that they do not in herbivores.

I think it has more to do with the assumption that horse meat is probably quite tough and not very appetizing.

Humans consume everything from mushrooms to mammals, it’s arbitrary as to which species in what kind of form are ewww and which are not.

Only when it comes to primates and closer that our DNA actively tries to stop us. Anything farther are matters of beliefs, preferences and safety.

> Only when it comes to primates and closer that our DNA actively tries to stop us

Interesting. Do you have evidence for this?

There are many more ewww type meats that we culturally accept, like crustaceans. I mean, they're sea insects basically. I enjoy a good prawn yet I'm repulsed by the idea of eating a scorpion. I am aware it's just a cultural artifact and not DNA driven disgust.

On the other hand herbivores and ruminants are the type of meat humans find the most delicious, and horse is one of them. Carnivores or omnivores I seem to understand they don't taste as good, and here's my justification for never considering cats, dogs, bears, etc., as possible food unless my life depends on it.

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