Edible Animals

[ysabetwordsmith]

My inner teenage boy was deeply amused by this billboard showing a spectrum of pets to food animals.

Me, I'm a pragmatist.  Anything I can get into my mouth and digest safely is potential food.  In practice, I strongly prefer not to eat other sapient beings unless I am starving to death, so things like cetacean, elephant, and primate are off my list of edibles outside of that context.  There are a few things I choose not to eat because I disapprove of their production methods; farmed veal exceeds my personal tolerance for animal abuse.  However, historic veal is in the same class as buckling for me -- used to be, all the milk animals would drop about 50% male offspring that you didn't need, so you dressed them out right then and had the tenderest meat ever.  That I would gleefully eat if I had the chance.  There are plenty of things I'd like to try, haven't encountered yet, and probably wouldn't want to eat routinely; dog and horse are both in that category.  So are insects, a key indicator that I am not culturally an American despite living here.  My everyday category is wider too: rabbit, goat, and lamb are all things I actively look for and order when I find them.  I also enjoy some animal parts that most Americans do not, including tongue, brains, heart, gizzard, and testicles.  I loved haggis the one time I got it.  However, I have tried kidney and wasn't fond of it; I really dislike liver and would have to be ravenous to eat it willingly.

These are all things that vary widely by culture and time period.  What are some of your settings?

Comments

[pandoraparanoia]

Interesting, let me think.
Rodents are a no (squirrels, mice, rats).
Amphibians, insects, arachnids, are things I will only ever accidentally ingest.
(I don't believe we have lizards or serpents here, but, no.)
I'm not keen on eating work animals (horses, donkeys, dogs, cats).
Game is hit or miss; I dislike deer, but love duck. Would probably try most game if given to me.
Birds in general I'm happy to eat.
I'll eat some fish to taste (salmon, cod, etc) but am generally not a fan of seafood or shellfish. (Despite being an island this is quite common here.)
I have no desire to try anything like seal, sea-lion, dolphin, or whale.
I find red and fatty meats harder to digest so I try to eat less of them, and less of mammals in general, but cow, sheep/lamb, pig are stables of diet here, very difficult to avoid.
Offal tends to be very strongly flavoured, or highly textured, and it is rare that I find myself liking it. (I'm a very-well-done kinda person.) Although if processed it can be nice, for example, haggis, white pudding, sausage can be delicious.
And there is always the preference to avoid the taste of animal cruelty, like you mentioned, veal is not something I want to try, and always choosing free-range or similar if possible.
I can trace most of these preferences back through culture, or as personal digestive limitations.

[pandoraparanoia]

I have eaten horse a few times unbeknownst to myself. There was a scandal a while back of some food providers thinning their beef products with horse. Being so close to France horse meat isn't unheard of, but there is a huge difference between farmed horse and what ended up mixed with our beef (mainly the type of medicines, steroids, and food each category is allowed to consume).