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

[siliconshaman]

I draw the line at eating people... cats, cetaceans, octopuses, elephants, primates, corvids, otters and canines, count as people. [although some humans I have my doubts about!]

Pretty much everything else is fair game, unless it's fish or eats a lot of fish.. I have an allergy. Alligator is ok, but it tastes fishy which is just off-putting. Rabbit is good, and was kind of a staple around here until a few years ago, ditto lamb and mutton. [venison is tasty, ostrich and kangaroo too. Snake is just blergh!]

Anything that's essentially a carrion eater,is usually nasty and carry bacteria that would not be good for you.

Kidneys you just have to know how to cook, but you can't go far wrong with a curry. Actually, pretty much all the organ meats you can cook up a tasty curry with, which should make you very suspicious of cheap curry houses!

[zeeth_kyrah]

If you're counting all those as people, I think horses should be on that list. Despite being delicious. Elk, on the other hand, is not really much more intelligent than any other deer. I might eat caribou (reindeer by any other name, eh?) but I think I'd treat them more like horses most of the time.

Killing wild animals for food... well, if that's the situation you're in, that's what food looks like. Might as well.

[siliconshaman]

Heh, shows my UK bias.. of course horses count as people.. but even if they didn't I wouldn't eat them. Never even considered it, hence failure to mention.