Cuisine a matter of taste

Her name was Allison and she was a retired racer.

"Don't get close to her," her trainer told me when I first met her at a south Texas ranch. "She hates people; she's aggressive."

I couldn't help it; I was drawn to this horse. As the owner and trainer talked, their backs to us, I approached Allison. Whispering to her I extended my open palm and let her sniff. In less than a minute I was stroking her gray nose. A few seconds later she was pushing her face against mine, giving me kisses. She followed me around like a puppy all afternoon. That horse and I had a connection.

With experiences like that - hardly unique - it's hard to imagine equine slaughter for human consumption. Yet as Monday's A1 story about wild horse populations illustrated, horsemeat is a marketable product. Americans don't generally eat it, but it's considered a delicacy in France, Japan, Italy, and other countries. So we sell it to them.

If it sounds terrible, consider how culture defines carnivorous cuisine. Emotional attachments to animals vary. Here it's not a big deal to eat a cow, but to many in India it's literally like eating your mother. Americans may treat pups as precious children, but in Korea and the Philippines (although illegal) dogs are still dinner.

Dietary culture changes with time and need. In Hawaii a 1979 story reported that dog was still widely eaten, as Hawaiians preferred it to pig. Even the French, whose love for dogs permits them in restaurants and shops, consumed canines as late as the 19th century. American colonialists ate raccoon and possum. Accounts of European explorers, Germans and Americans in economic crises, and northern Alaskans show that people will eat whatever's available.

At a 2002 business dinner in China I was served orange-glazed duck feet (tough and chewy). In Vietnam, snake meat is considered an aphrodisiac. Camels in the Middle East, cats in southern Africa, guinea pigs in Peru, and grasshoppers are food in Japan.

"As a child my family's menu consisted of two choices: Take it or leave it." - Buddy Hackett

I'll leave it.

Sholeh Patrick is a columnist for the Hagadone News Network who thinks alligator isn't bad. E-mail sholehjo@hotmail.com.