Meat

Meat is animal tissue, mostly muscle, that people eat as food. In everyday and commercial use the word mainly refers to the flesh of land animals such as mammals, birds and reptiles, while fish and shellfish are usually treated as separate categories. Because it matters so much to diets, economies and religious life across the world, meat is one of the foods most studied by anthropologists and by the food industry.

History

Eating meat is very old. The earliest humans probably included it in their diet, perhaps in the form of small animals or scavenged remains, much as some chimpanzees do today. The control of fire changed the way meat was eaten, since cooking made it easier to digest and safer to eat; this idea is central to Claude Lévi-Strauss's study The Raw and the Cooked. Neanderthals and the first Homo sapiens who lived through the glacial periods in Europe and Asia are thought to have relied heavily on meat, although the exact proportions are still debated.

The Neolithic Revolution changed how meat was obtained. Around seven thousand years ago, wild cattle were domesticated in places such as Macedonia, Crete and Anatolia, and hunting stopped being the only source. For a long time meat remained an occasional food, linked to festivals and religious rites, such as the Greek hecatomb, a great sacrifice of a hundred oxen, or the pig slaughter practised in many rural societies. In Imperial Rome, pork, mutton and goat were common, reflecting the importance of herding.

In medieval Europe meat was largely reserved for the upper classes, although pork and poultry were somewhat more accessible. Religion shaped how it was eaten. The Catholic Church imposed partial abstinence during Lent, while Judaism and Islam forbade pork and regulated how animals were slaughtered. In the Iberian Peninsula, where the three monotheistic faiths coexisted, butchers' shops were sometimes divided by religious use. To preserve meat, people salted it and marinated it in vinegar, and spices such as pepper helped disguise spoilage. The butcher's trade became established in towns, and trade in meat between European towns is documented in texts from the fourteenth century, such as the Ménagier de Paris of 1393.

The colonisation of the Americas brought a very unequal exchange of livestock. European animals spread across the continent, while the turkey was almost the only species that travelled the other way. On the great grasslands of Argentina, the United States and Australia, cattle ranching was organised around hides and wool, and meat was regarded as a by-product that was hard to preserve and transport to markets. Over time, intensive farming changed this picture: by 1990 it accounted for 30 percent of world meat production, and by 2005 for 40 percent.

Culture

Meat is central to the identity of many peoples. In Spain and much of Europe, stews are the clearest example: the Catalan escudella, the Asturian fabada and the Madrid cocido combine several kinds of meat with pulses and vegetables, and are traditionally served in three courses, broth first, then vegetables, then meat. The habit of adding a bone to the stock, which was reused day after day, lasted until the post-war years, and proverbs also reflect the value once placed on meat as a sign of wellbeing.

Regional variation is enormous. In Japan, wagyu from the Kōbe area is cut into thin slices for sukiyaki and shabu shabu. In Italy, the Chianina is a large breed associated with Tuscany. In China, the word for pig is often used as a generic term for meat, which shows how central pork is to Chinese cooking. Lamb and kid are linked to the pastoral life of Mediterranean regions, and horse meat is eaten commonly in France, Italy, Germany and Japan.

Some meats are subject to taboos or cultural rejection. The prohibition of pork in Judaism and Islam is the most widespread, and in India the cow's sacred status limits its consumption. Other meats are eaten in some places and rejected in others: dog is eaten in China, South Korea and Vietnam, cats appear in some Chinese markets, and in Spain it is considered unacceptable to eat them, although they were eaten in times of scarcity. The Spanish saying «dar gato por liebre», to pass off a cat as a hare, recalls that kind of deception. Rabbit and hare, traditionally considered game, are now also raised on farms.

Today, global consumption keeps growing alongside the world population, especially in developing countries. In some European countries, such as Germany and Sweden, annual consumption per person has fallen in recent years, partly because of concern about the environment, health and the conditions in which animals are raised. The meat industry is one of the largest sectors of the food trade. In 2023 around 370 million tonnes were produced, and chicken was the most produced meat, accounting for 34.2 percent of the total.

Trivia