Burger that: horses for courses won't do Chevaline … a horsemeat
butcher in Paris. Photo: Reuters THE eating of horses has a long
history. Many prehistoric cultures both ate and sacrificed
horses, and the ban on horsemeat by Pope Gregory III in 732 was
in part an attempt to eradicate pagan rituals in the Germanic
states. From the early Middle Ages, the horse grew in
importance. It made no sense to consume an animal rich in
symbolism and expensive to buy and maintain, when farming gave
us ready supplies of other, similar foodstuffs, namely beef and
mutton. So entrenched was this view that by the 17th century
eating horses was banned in most European countries. And when
horse as food started to be popularised in the mid-19th century,
it was partly driven by the need to feed growing numbers of
urban poor when meat prices were rising sharply. Its proponents
in England and France argued that thousands of horses went to
waste every day, mainly elderly cab nags, which were worked to
death and then slaughtered for gl