“The holy king Olaf made the folk of the west become christian, and bid them build a church on that place where now is a priest’s steading.

The chief Thorstein (Stone of Thor) lived on his farm close by. He was cutting hay with his scythe on the marshes when the messenger came from the king to bid him to let himself be made christian and join in the building of a church. Thorstein was so upset by the demand that folks for centuries to come could see the deep furrows in the marshes after each cut of the scythe  which he swung in his rage.

Finally he threw his scythe down, took an axe and swore that if the tree he was now going to fell would not serve as door post in this church, he would do no more work on the building.

The tree was felled, and the chief carried it himself like a staff in his hand to the king, who was overjoyed and made his craftsmen cut a doorstep out of it and place it in the church.But Olaf was not fully satisfied with Thorstein. While the work was done, Thorstein had made provisions for himself out of a large ham of a horse, and would not let go of it, no matter what the king told him against the eating of horse. Thorstein did not object to anything the king Olav told him about the White Christ, but that you weren’t allowed to eat horse meat, he could not understand at all.

And ever since, horse meat is only used in sausage, where you normally can’t tell it’s there.

The saying is: The sausage is divine, for only God knows what’s in it.”

In other words: In germanic cultures, horse was normally eaten as part of the sacrificial feasts. The first christian kings persecuted the folk religion, and with it the eating of horse meat. There was a time when eating horse could get you hanged as a pagan. Old taboos persist. No such conflict in romanesque France.

I wouldn’t go so far there. At least here in the states we have the USDA which inspects every slaughterhouse for every animal. Even small farmers have to register their operations with the USDA and are inspected regularly. No matter how cheap the meat is, we have some line of accountability. I’m not saying that this is the best scenario, but at least it offers some sort of paper trail, or meat trail. All the small trim and undesirable bits that are destined for pet food or Spam or soup mixes etc came from animals that at some point crossed paths with an agent.

tl;dr even dog food gets inspected

It’s not like the horse was unsafe to eat, microbially or by merit of its horsiness.

It was unsafe to eat because some of it contains a drug that’s not safe for humans.

It’s not like most grocery store food – animal and plant – doesn’t contain trace amounts of insect.

Quite a few of the samples contained 100% horse meat, not “trace amounts”.

Not sure the point of your comment.

Food avoidances and taboos have historically been based on religion, or have functioned to demonstrate social status differences between individuals and social groupings. Although Leviticus is silent on the specific issue of horse, in 723, Pope Gregory III indicated that the eating of horses was a ‘filthy and abominable custom’ in his instructions to Boniface, Bishop to the Germans. In Ireland, the Canones hibernenses, which date from the 7th century, impose an unusually harsh penance of 4 y on bread and water for the consumption of horsemeat.The explanation of this nonbiblically based Canon Law is that the consumption of horsemeat was associated with pre-Christian Celtic and Teutonic religious sacrifice.
The church condemnation of horsemeat consumption was directed to suppressing pagan practices and distinguishing the Christian from the heathen

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2034431/

(I’m not terribly picky in the way of species, but I may fuss over preparation, or how it was acquired.)

Not terribly surprisingly, though; we’ve bred dogs for every other purpose, it makes sense to breed dogs to be good for eating.

Eatin’ horses are end-of-life horses, preferably work horses. Age and work improves their meat quality, instead of degrading it like with cattle and sheep. Young horse isn’t tender – old horse that’s lived a full life is tender.

There’s lovely looking horses and stupid looking horses, just like there are lovely looking cows and mean looking cows, or beautifully ornamental chickens and chickens that look sort of like a feathery sack with a head and feet.

Appearance doesn’t have (very) much to do with whether the animal tastes good, makes a good companion, or does good work.

I think it’s more a problem that some people can only imagine horses as companion animals (a pretty popular childhood fantasy) and eating companions is naturally taboo. Stinks too much of cannibalism. There’s a big difference between a pet pig and an eating pig, and I don’t see why there shouldn’t be one for horses as well.

First off is the plain and simple thing that some people don’t like to eat pork. Some people are prohibited from eating pork for religious reasons. Some people can’t eat pork for medical reasons. All of us are entitled to know that it’s pork, not chicken, because we tried to buy a chicken meal and got pork instead.

It’s about fraud. Especially if you’re buying one thing and get a cheaper second thing substituted.