| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 111.5 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Madeleine Ferrières. Sacred Cow, Mad Cow: A History of Food Fears. Translated by Jody Gladding. (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History.) New York: Columbia University Press. 2006. Pp. xiii, 399. $29.50.
This cultural history of food safety and policy emphasizes that there was never a golden age when people were in harmony with their food—and quality as well as availability have almost always caused anxieties. But do not be misled by the title: there is nothing about Mad Cow Disease (BSE), the period covered ending in the early twentieth century.	1
Meat, consistently problematic, is discussed in the early chapters. Long before national legislation, there were local regulations, and it is with the scattered records of these, supplemented by medical and veterinary texts, that Madeleine Ferrières begins. She discusses a southern French town's 1303 charter, which governed the local meat trade. She interprets prohibitions on goat in terms of Galenic traditions, according to which goat meat was "hot," creating tendency toward fever. As for sheep, cattle, and pigs, meat from diseased animals was banned. Sheep were to be examined before slaughter, and cattle afterwards, but pigs needed ante and postmortem inspections to check for "pig leprosy." Stricter municipal regulation predominated in Mediterranean towns while regulation by trade guilds was common in the North. Guilds existed to protect their members but were also concerned with the quality of goods. Some features were common everywhere, such as the requirement for animals to walk into town for slaughter. Consumers were zoophagus, preferring to recognize the animal they devoured.	. . .

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