Feeding Meat to Herbivorous Animals: the Taboo

In later posts I will look at the very real health and safety consequences that can occur when animal flesh is feed to herbivorous livestock such as sheep, cows and horses.  But in this post I want to discuss how our aversion to this practice has pre-scientific roots and functions as a cultural taboo.

Many people have feeling about the natural order of things. The sheep eats the grass, the man eats the sheep.  Much of this natural order is no longer literally necessary.  Stock feed may be safely made from many different products, processed to extract their consituent nutrients.  The same is true of the human diet which no longer needs to include meat for nutritional reasons.  However the "natural order" remains intuitive pleasing to the majority, and has for a rather long time.  This may explain the existence of cuationary myths about how animals may be driven mad by feeding them inappropriate foods.

Several myths tell how horses were driven mad by being fed flesh, and went on to attack an devour their owners.  Glaucus, King of Ephyra, was said to feed his chariot horses human flesh--ultimately causing them to turn on him during a race and eat him alive.  Likewise the Thracian King Diomedes was said to feed human flesh to horses and turned upon him and ate him.  These myths can be read as encoded warnings that animals should be feed that which is natural for them.


Sources::
Papakostas YG (2005). et al Horse Madness (hippomania) and hippophobia. History of Psychiatry 16, 467-471.