HORSE-FLESH AS FOOD

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 55, Issue 3938, 11 August 1937, Page 10

HORSE-FLESH AS FOOD

HOW THE PARISIANS FARED. EXTRACTS FROM VICTOR HUGO’S DIARY. A recent cable message stated that the authorities are trying to popularise the consumption of horse flesh in Germany as human food, apparently with the object of reducing the importation of meat, and thereby contributing to the policy of making Germany self-supporting. There are now 20 horse flesh guilds in Germany, combining 1200 businesses. It is contended that horse flesh is more nutritrious than beef, veal, or pork. A great deal of horse flesh is eaten in France and Belgium by the poor because it is cheaper than any other meat. Most of the horses slaughtered for food in these countries are old worn-out animals. Horses that are fit for work and in good condition are too valuable to be eaten. It was the shortage of food during the siege of Paris, which began on 17th September, 1870, after the French disaster at Sedan, and continued until the capitulation of the city at the end of January, 1871, which introduced horse flesh to the Parisians. Previous to the siege there had been a strong prejudice against eating horse flesh. Horse butchers were first licensed by the French Government in 1866, and four years later, when the siege of Paris began, there were only eighteen horse butchers in the city, despite the efforts of the Government to popularise horse flesh. 50,000 HORSES SLAUGHTERED A Parisian newspaper discussing the subject, in 1886 said:— “It is all very well for a few savants to sit round a well-appointed table to feast upon the succulent parts of a young, tender and perfectly healthy horse, especially if the steaks are ‘aux truffles’ and the kidneys stewed in Madeira, but that young, tender and perfectly healthy horse would cost more than an equally tender, young and perfectly healthy bullock or cow. So where is the advantage ? In order to obtain that advantage horses only fit for the knacker’s yard, not fit for human food, would have to be killed and the hard-working artisan with his non-vitiated taste, who does not even care for game or venison when it happens to be high, wculd certainly not care for a superannuated charger* to be set before him. You might just as well ask an unsophisticated cannibal to feast upon an invalid.” But during the siege of Paris 50,000 horses were slaughtered for food, an.l the supply of horse flesh was so inadequate that towards the end of the siege the rationed allowance was less than 2 oz. per head per day. Bread which was a mixture of wheat, rye, rice., oats, bran and chopped straw mixed with starch, was rationed at less than 8 oz. per head.

EATING THE ZOO. The besieged Parisians ate not only horses, but dogs, cats, rats, mice, and most of the animals at the zoo. The following extracts from the diary of Victor Hugo, who was one of the 1,800,000 Parisians in the besieged city( gives an indication of the strait to which they were reduced:— October 16.—We are eating horse with all its variations. I have seen in front of a pork butcher’s shop the following notice:—“Saucisson chevaleresque.”

October 22.—For the last two days Paris has been reduced to salt meat. A rat costs fourpence.

November 23.—Ries are made out of rats. An onion costs a half-penny and a potato a half-penny. November 27.—-We have brought an antelope’s leg from the Jardin des Plantes (where the Zoo was situated.) November 28. We ate bear for dinner. December I.—Yesterday we ate venison, bear the day before, and antelope the two previous days. These are presents from the Jardin des Plantes. December 3.—After to-day we have only brown bread in Paris. December 15.—Yesterday I ate rat. December 30.—We are now eating nothing but pork, or perhaps dog, or perhaps rat; we are eating we don’t know what. December 31.—1 am sharing the sufferings of the people. It is true that I can’t digest horse, but I eat it all the same, and am given slices of it. We are eating brown bread, and same for all of us, and this is right, now we are on black bread. It is the same for all of us, and this is right. A DOCTOR’S OBSERVATIONS. An English doctor who lived in Paris throughout the siege, and subsequently published his experiences in a book, entitled, An Englishman in Paris, quoted an ex-officer of the Foreign Legion (who gave him an appetising lunch which included field mice and rats) in regard to the respective merits of dogs and cats as human food. “The moment horse flesh fails,” said this ex-officer, who had lost his right foot fighting at Constantine in Algeria, “the Parisians will fall back on dogs, turning up their noses at cats and rats, though both are a thousand times superior to dogs. In saying this I am virtually li-

belling the cat and the rat, for the ‘friend of man,’ be he cooked in ever so grand a way, is always a detestable dish. His flesh is oily and flabby; stew him, do what you will, there is always a flavour of castor oil about salt, or rather to pepper him; that is him. The only way to minimise that flavour, to make him palatable, is to cut him up in slices, and leave them for a fortnight, bestrewing them very liberally with pepper corns. Then bebore ‘accomodating’ them finally put them into boiling water for a while, and throw the water away. No such compromises are necessary with ‘the fauna of the tiles,’ who with his larger sized victim, the rat, has been the most misprized, and most misjudged of animals, from the culinary point of view. Stewed puss is far more delicious than stewed rabbit. The flesh of the former tastes less pungent than that of the latter, and is more tender.” A STRONG PREJUDICE. In England there is a strong preudice against horseflesh as human food, and none is eaten, except perhaps unconsciously, when it is mixed with other meats and made into sausages. England exports yearly several thousands of old, decrepit, worn-out horses to France and Belgium, where they are eventually slaughtered for human consumption. A small number of horses are slaughtered in England for cats’ meat . . . The cats’ meat man who perambulates the streets of London with his barrow containing large lumps of cooked horse flesh is always eagerly awaited by the cats on his round. He does not call every day of the week, but the cats know his days for calling and the time he is due. They can be seen sitting outside the doors of shops and offices waiting for him. The meat is usually sold in small, thin slices, stuck on a wooden skewer. The usual order is for a penn’orth, which consists of a couple of ounces. In the inner suburbs of London there are a few shops which specialise in cats’ meat, and bear on their windows the inscription, “Pussy’s Butcher.”

STRANGE TASTES. Few men would care to experiment with their gastronomical apparatus by introducing strange meats into it, but Francis Buckland, a famous English naturalist, who died in 1880, was a daring pioneer in this direction. He made a practice of experimenting on himself with strange meats. To some extent this habit was inherited from his father, Dean Buckland. It is recorded that when a horse belonging to the dean’s brother-in-law was shot, the dean had the tongue of the animal pickled and served at a luncheon party. The guests enjoyed this delicacy, but were subsequently somewhat dismayed when told what they had eat-

As a naturalist, and honorary pathologist to the London Zoo, Francis Buckland had many opportunities of indulging his strange fancies in the matter of diet. Mice, rats, frogs, snails, hedgehogs, tortoises, and puppies were served at his table at intervals. After he became associated with the Zoo he tried alligator steak, and soup made from an elephant’s trunk. When the giraffe house at the Zoo was burned down he was able to indulge in roast giraffe. He recorded in his journal that, after learning a panther had died at the Zoo.— “I wrote up at once to tell them, to sen! me down some chops. It had, however, been buried a couple of days, but I got them to dig it up and send me some. It was not very good.” The only animal Buckland condemned as nasty in the form of food was the mole.

AFRICAN NATIVES’ PREFERENCE. Some of the native tribes of Africa like their food in a putrid state. Major P. M. Stewart records in his book “Travel and Sport In Many Lands” how he watched a scramble among some of his native carriers for the hind quarters of a tiny anelope, which was in a putrid condition. “At that time I was surprised at their craving for meat and their indifference to its condition,” he writes, “for I did not know that they devour caterpillars and bee-bread, mix blood with their meal, and have no objection to stale eggs of almost any age, or decayed flesh of every description. They also drank the foulest water, apparently with impunity.” He quotes Livingstone’s statement that “the native idea of a good egg differs as widely from our own as is possible on such a trifling subject.” Also, that “an egg is eaten with apparent relish, though an embryo chick be inside.” And when travelling up the Zambesi “the canoe men invariably picked up every dead fish they saw on the surface of the water, however far gone. An unfragrant odor was no objection the fish was boiled and eaten, and the water drunk as soup.” On the other hand, when a donkey died, they were shocked at the idea of eating it, saying, “It would be like eating man himself, because the donkey lives with a man, and is his bosom companion.” So, too, a chief refused a leg of an ox, saying that neither he nor his people ever partook of beef, as they “looked upon cattle as human, and living at home like men. Major Stewart mentions that some of his carriers refused to eat zebra flesh for

fear of getting striped like a zebra; others refused to eat bushbuck lest theyi should become spotted. OTHER INSTANCES. The famous Frederick C. Selous, in his book “A Hunter’s Wanderings In Africa,” recorded that on one occasion his men came across an addled ostrich egg and esteemed it such a delicacy that they licked every piece of the* shell that could be found after the explosion that followed when the egg was cracked. Selous also mentioned that some natives cut up the stinking carcase of an elephant that had been festering for eight days beneath the fiercest rays of the tropical sun. “Truly some tribes of Kaffirs and bushmen are fouler feeders than vultures or hyenas,” wrote Selous. “This is not an isolated case, as they are constantly in the habit of eating putrid meat, and there is little doubt that they like it just as well, if not better than sweet flesh. Curiously, too, it does not seem to do them any harm.”