Specifically why is goat not a major source of meat? I understand that goat cheese is becoming more popular and that goat milk has a niche among american consumers but what events/reasons are there that goat meat is not a major thing. Goats are a major source of food across Africa, the middle east, Latin america and Asia but from what I have observed it isn't popular in North America and Europe.
What are the reasons goat is not a source of meat in America?
To investigate one possible answer to this question we can look back to the Viking (Norse) civilization which expanded out of Scandinavia around AD700 (Note: as with many civilizations of the time, the advent of sailing technology initially led to peaceful trading, which paved the way for move violent raiding. The first Viking raid is historically taken as June 9, AD795). These raiders settled much of Continental Europe, the British Isles, and the North Atlantic, merging with local populations and playing a role in founding modern nation-states such as England, France, and Russia. These cultural views on the inherent relative value of the different species of livestock can be seen in many of the cultures influenced by the Norse expansions.
In Norse culture the aversion (or rather, lack of favor for) goats comes from a largely cultural bias reinforced with religious undertones. Five types of livestock primarily provided the basis of European (and Fertile Crescent) food production for thousands of years: cows, sheep, pigs, goats, and horses. Of these, the Vikings prized pigs bred for meat, cows for milk products, and horses for transport and prestige. In Old Norse mythology pork was the meat on which Odin feasted daily with his champions in Valhalla. Sheep and goats, meanwhile, were much lower in prestige but still useful economically and kept more for milk products and wool or hair than meat. Examining bones in garbage heaps of a 9th-century chieftain's farm in Norway can show the relative numbers of each type of livestock consumed. At this particular farm nearly half of all livestock bones were of cows, one third were pigs, while only one fifth were of sheep and goats. An often-used initial evaluation of the "pecking order" of Norse farms is the amount of barn space dedicated to the higher-maintenance cows. Interestingly enough, many historians believe that the downfall of the Greenland Norse and the decline of the Iceland Norse can be in part explained by an initial reluctance to move past these cultural biases, as valuable time and land were used to grow and dry hay to feed the highly-prized cows over the long northern winters.
I've gotten a bit off topic so I'll wrap up, but the takeaway here is that we often have to consider cultural biases when considering questions like this, beyond just the practicality of a particular food source.
Sources: Fitzhugh and Ward ed. "Vikings: the North American Saga" (DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2000) McGovern."The Vinland Adventure, a North American Perspective" (North American Archaeologist, 1981) Arneborg and Gullov. "Man, Culture, and Environment in Ancient Greenland" (Copenhagen: Danish Poland Center, 1998) Diamond. "Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed" (New York: Penguin Books, 2006)
In North America, when settlers moved west, the government promoted an "open range" concept for grazing cattle and sheep, as much of the land was entirely unsettled [by whites]. Sheep and goats both crop the grass at a lower height than cattle, and thus render the ground less usable for a longer period of time. This means that the sheep directly compete with cattle for grazing ability; in a time that cattle quickly became an American favorite, sheep herders had little clout in land disputes what court system there was. So begins the range wars fought throughout the midwest, comprising most notably Texas, Arizona, Oklahoma, and Colorado. These "wars" tended toward skirmishes between families rather than actual wars, but still with deadly conclusions. Some went far beyond family arguments with weapons, and in the case of the Johnson Country War, an outright manhunt for 70 with orders to "hang or kill on site." This particular war was in fact, between "Big Cattle" and the small time herdsman; it didn't even involve sheep. This simply outlines more, how much power the large herd owners commanded.
Cattlemen would fence off private and public land to maintain an adequate food source for their livestock, where sheep herders would advocate for open range and free grazing. Disputes peppered the West, and found its way into the Supreme Court in OMAECHEVARRIA v. STATE OF IDAHO. I couldn't find the eventual aftermath of this ruling which seems to divide land fairly.
Worth note, in Texas of all places, there is an annual goat festival in Brady, and they take it very seriously.
I'm not a historian by definition, but I am a farmer, studied ruminant behaviors, ecosystem impacts, and Texas history.
Mods, please let me know if I have not met the qualifications for this post. I regard this sub with the highest esteem, and do not wish to taint it with my informal background; but everyone else's responses have been removed.
This is a complicated answer, but I'll do my best to answer. There are multiple reasons:
Domestic goats are not native to North America. Breeds such as Oreamnos americanus (mountain goat) and Ovis canadensis (bighorn sheep) are too large and aggressive to domesticate. As a result, native populations did not develop cuisine which featured goat or sheep meat. While neolithic hunters would have undoubtedly killed and eaten the aforementioned animals given the chance, these spontaneous opportunities were too few and far between to form the basis of a cultural norm. When white cultures began to dominate North America, there were no goat dishes to appropriate.
Food taboos are notoriously powerful, particularly those associated with meats and other animal-based proteins. Insects, for instance, are a fantastic food source: plentiful, easy to breed and control, versatile, and nutritious. However, most Westerners shudder at the idea of slurping down a wriggling grub or crunching on a grasshopper. Meanwhile, the natives of Papua New Guinea happily and eagerly seek out sago grubs as a delicacy. The reason is simply that humans are uncomfortable consuming unfamiliar food items, regardless of their taste or nutritional benefit. Goat is an excellent lean meat, but those unaccustomed to thinking of goats as food are hesitant to consider the possibilities. Consider cow's milk in North America - it's consumed in the extreme, and while goat's milk has a niche market, that's as far as our "milk adventuring" will go. We'll create plant based "milks" - almond, soy, rice etc - but sheep, camel, donkey, horse, yak, or reindeer milks are considered varying degrees of disgusting to hilarious.
In regards to Latin America's familiarity with goat dishes despite having no native population: goats were imported from the old world. For instance, the Bhuj goat of Brazil originates from an Indian Kutchi breed of goat. During European Colonialism, it was commonplace for animals to be imported to the new colonies for various reasons (food, companionship, hunting, etc). Spain and Portugal had more domestic species in their regions than did England and France, and this is reflected in their choices of animals selected for importation.
Not sure if this is allowed as a top level comment, but there was a very similar thread but for lamb instead of goat. I'd assume the reasons are similar if not the same.
We should be praising goats and not eating them! Would you eat your dog? No. Or your cat? Nope goats are intelligent, carefree, adorable animals. I'll eat the hell out of bacon but never consider eating a poor goat.
Why did people on the American frontier choose to graze cattle on the Western Plains instead of something else, like goats?
To anyone with the knowledge to fully answer this interesting question, how did chicken become so widespread and globally popular?
in addition, if I may, what about sheep (not lamb) and horse? these don't seem all that taboo in other cultures or regions.
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