# People as food animals? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [April 25, 2006, 4:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105 "2006-04-25T04:42:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2006, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/21 "2006-04-27T23:05:48Z")
> [@Inigo Montoya](#): > > New Zealand? If this is a real question, what are you querying? ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2006, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/22 "2006-04-28T14:36:11Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > If this is a real question, what are you querying? My bad. I was thinking “Tazmania” when you said New Zealand. Same thing…it’s all England. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2006, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/23 "2006-04-28T21:20:45Z")
> [@Inigo Montoya](#): > > My bad. I was thinking “Tazmania” when you said New Zealand. It’s spelt Tasmania. ---
**Author:** ![Inigo\_Montoya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inigo_montoya/32/124_2.png) [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2006, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/24 "2006-04-28T21:37:22Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > It’s spelt Tasmania. Are you sure? ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2006, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/25 "2006-04-28T22:36:37Z")
> [@Inigo Montoya](#): > > Are you sure? Google it and see. ---
**Author:** ![Purl\_little\_me](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/76d3ee/32.png) [@Purl\_little\_me](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Purl_little_me)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/26 "2006-04-29T00:22:05Z")
I saw the show where apes eat monkeys. Do apes or monkeys eat their own? Either as prey or simple carrion scavenging? ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/27 "2006-04-29T00:32:00Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > Shockingly inefficient, of course, but I suppose you could say the same of farming any animal to eat. Humans as meat have got to be an order of magnitude more inefficient than any other meat animal, given the extremely slow rate of growth. I’m not doubting that it happened, but I’m having difficulty thinking of any situation where it would make any sense from the standpoint of resource allocation. ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/28 "2006-04-29T00:34:12Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > New Zealand was perhaps in the unique position of having no indigenous land mammals - indeed, no indigenous mammals at all apart from seals and a few bats, which don’t have much meat on them. Maori brought with them rats and dogs, which were a food source, but until Europeans arrived in the late 18th century and introduced pigs and the like, the main sources of protein were birds, fish and shellfish. These were fortunately abundant - although large bird species like the moa were wiped out due to over-hunting and habitat depletion - but for that real meaty taste, people were the only other option. Shockingly inefficient, of course, but I suppose you could say the same of farming any animal to eat. I’m not any kind of wildlife expert, but it’s my understanding that there are many South Pacific islands that have no indigenous land animals, aside from insects. New Zealand has got to be the largest such place, however. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/29 "2006-04-29T12:47:10Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > Humans as meat have got to be an order of magnitude more inefficient than any other meat animal, given the extremely slow rate of growth. I’m not doubting that it happened, but I’m having difficulty thinking of any situation where it would make any sense from the standpoint of resource allocation. The _least_ inefficient way to do it would be to keep a breeding stock of women, from whom you could derive a regular supply of tender, juicy, milk-fed babies. Still a long run for a short slide, but at least you’d only be squandering food resources for a year or so instead of upwards of a decade. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2006, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/30 "2006-04-29T18:11:01Z")
> [@Case Sensitive](#): > > The _least_ inefficient way to do it would be to keep a breeding stock of women, from whom you could derive a regular supply of tender, juicy, milk-fed babies. Still a long run for a short slide, but at least you’d only be squandering food resources for a year or so instead of upwards of a decade. Sounds like you might have a modest proposal there. 😃 I was actually thinking that the least inefficient way to do it would be to eat slaves that were passing their prime as labourers, giving you the benefits of slave-holding and adding in the food thing as a bonus at the end. It’s inefficient any which way you look at it, though. Any slave that you can’t get useful labour out of isn’t going to have much food value either. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2006, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/31 "2006-05-01T00:32:03Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > Humans as meat have got to be an order of magnitude more inefficient than any other meat animal, given the extremely slow rate of growth. I’m not doubting that it happened, but I’m having difficulty thinking of any situation where it would make any sense from the standpoint of resource allocation. I think what you are overlooking is that these were not people grown for meat, they were slaves captured from neighbouring tribes and used as a living larder. Because they could maintain themselves by growing or gathering food there was absolutely no cost involved as as such the process was infinitely efficient. > [@Diceman](#): > > I’m not any kind of wildlife expert, but it’s my understanding that there are many South Pacific islands that have no indigenous land animals, aside from insects. New Zealand has got to be the largest such place, however. What made New Zealand special was that the superabundance of large flightless bird led to people allowing their pigs and chickens to die off. People on other Polynesian islands mainatained thier domestic animals precisely because there were few land animals, even Easter Island mainatained chickens. In contrast in New Zealand chickens disappeared within a century of colonisation and pigs either weren’t carried at all or were all eaten as soon as the people landed. Once the large wildlife was all exterminated people had no domesticable food animals aside from people and dogs. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2006, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/32 "2006-05-01T00:42:18Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > I think what you are overlooking is that these were not people grown for meat, they were slaves captured from neighbouring tribes and used as a living larder. Because they could maintain themselves by growing or gathering food there was absolutely no cost involved as as such the process was infinitely efficient. Perhaps I am misunderstanding, since I have been too lazy to read the various links in the thread, but the OP quotes you as saying that humans were “kept” as food animals. I took this, perhaps mistakenly, to mean humans were “kept” in the same fashion as more familiar domestic food animals. The process you describe here sounds like hunting the neighbouring tribes as food animals, which is a rather different sort of thing. Either way, it’s still calorically inefficient. If you’re interested in feeding yourself, you’d be far better off wiping out the tribe and stealing their agricultural land for yourself than you are eating the tribe members who can be sustained on that land. I may just have to read the links after all. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2006, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/33 "2006-05-01T01:07:48Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > I took this, perhaps mistakenly, to mean humans were “kept” in the same fashion as more familiar domestic food animals. The process you describe here sounds like hunting the neighbouring tribes as food animals, which is a rather different sort of thing. No, the people were kept as food animals in exactly the same way as any wild caught food animal. People were caught and kept alive for a period ranging from weeks to years after which they were killed and eaten. That is in no way similar to hunting and exactly like keeping the people as food animals. It doesn’t differ from the way that we farm tuna today, and is excatly like the way that people treated pigs for most of history. How would you describe the custom of keeping slaves alive for years with the ultimate intention of using them for food? > [@](#): > > Either way, it’s still calorically inefficient. Nope, as I pointed out is is calorifically infinitely efficient. You can not get more efficient than a process that generates a return for no cost. > [@](#): > > If you’re interested in feeding yourself, you’d be far better off wiping out the tribe and stealing their agricultural land for yourself than you are eating the tribe members who can be sustained on that land. No, you are not. We had a thread on this very subject within the last couple of weeks. The point you are overlooking is that prior to European arrival New Zealand had an excess of agricultural land. The land was not limiting. What was limiting was calories and specifically protein. Polynesian crops have always been protein deficient and being tropical most of them won’t grow in New Zealand. As a result calories were hard to obtain and protein had to be derived almost exclusivley by hunting and foraging. A live person can farm and hunt and forage all by themslves. They are a self mainatining protein dense food store. There was a massive advantage in having acsess to people. Let’s assume you can only possibly farm 100ha ofland and still have enough time to forage for protein. You already own 100ha of land. What benefit do you think you are going to gain by killing me and stealing 100ha of my land? You can’t physically work the land you already own. Killing me and stealing my land can’t increase the amount of food avialable to you by even one calorie. But if you enslave me and my family you can force us to work that land and to forage, and then at regular intervals you can kill and eat us. That increases the amount of food avalaible to you immensely. ---
**Author:** ![Operation\_Ripper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/34f0e0/32.png) [@Operation\_Ripper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Operation_Ripper)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2006, 1:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/34 "2006-05-01T01:19:59Z")
Man, I wish they had been literate, reading their thought processes during such activities would be fascinating. Sooooo, the answer to my OP seems to be no, noone else engaged in such an actvity, the New Zealanders were the only culture? As far as we know to date. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2006, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/35 "2006-05-01T01:27:08Z")
Okay, I’ll concede most of the points. I hadn’t realized there was no competition for arable land in New Zealand, which does indeed change the efficiency calculations. I wasn’t thinking of the protein issue either, and that’s of course a significant issue. However, I still contend that “kept” is misleading. I, at least, am completely unfamiliar with any English usage of “kept” in reference to food animals that does not involve the raising of said animals, maintaining breeding stock, etc. That is not what was happening in New Zealand according to your cites (most of which I have now read, at least those that are online). What was happening was the consumption of enemies killed or captured in battle, sometimes as you note after some period of keeping them as slaves. Well and good, but that’s not at all the sort of practice that came to mind reading the phrase “kept as food animals.” What came to mind was maintaining and breeding a population of slaves for the principle purposes of eating them. A semantic quibble, perhaps, but one which may have led to the OP’s questioning of your statement. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2006, 1:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/36 "2006-05-01T01:36:32Z")
> [@Operation Ripper](#): > > Man, I wish they had been literate, reading their thought processes during such activities would be fascinating. There are written accounts out there, you can find one by following the links through. > [@](#): > > … noone else engaged in such an actvity, the New Zealanders were the only culture? Keeping people as food animals will only happen in agricultural societies that lack domestic pigs. HG societies have no capacity or reason to keep slaves for food, and pigs are far more practical than people as food animals. Those two factors limit the possible choices to a few Pacific islands and the Americas. When we toss in the fact that you need large populations to allow the capture of food slaves you can rule out most Pacific islands. And we will never know whether people were kept as slaves in the Americas. The cultures were too badly damaged by disease before Europeans even saw it. We know that people were consumed for food in the Americas, but there is no way of knowing whether people were ever kept as food animals. It seempossible that they were since American agriculture in many places to suffered from the same protein limitation as Polynesian agriculture. However the Americas never saw the total extinction of all game animals that was seen in New Zealand so humans as a protein store may not have been as appealing. ---
**Author:** ![Blake](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a9a28c/32.png) [@Blake](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blake)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2006, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/37 "2006-05-01T01:57:25Z")
> [@Gorsnak](#): > > I hadn’t realized there was no competition for arable land in New Zealand… It’s not really accurate to say there was no competition for arable land, the prime land was still a resource that was fought over occasionally. The point is that Maori agricuture was below subsitence levels and so was limited by the people available, not by the land available. People and more specifically protein had become the limiting resource, not land. > [@](#): > > However, I still contend that “kept” is misleading. I, at least, am completely unfamiliar with any English usage of “kept” in reference to food animals that does not involve the raising of said animals, maintaining breeding stock, etc. Well in that case you don’t belive that many New Guinea tribes don’t keep pigs or cassowary for food. Those tribes don’t breed pigs or casssowaries, they catch wild animals and raise them. No breeding stock has been maintained, yet those tribes have kept pigs for food for millenia, except that you apparently argue that they do not kkpe those animals for food. Similarly farmed tuna is derived from wild caught stock, there is no breeding stock of tuna. So you are saying that tuna are not kept as food animals. > [@](#): > > Well and good, but that’s not at all the sort of practice that came to mind reading the phrase “kept as food animals.” What came to mind was maintaining and breeding a population of slaves for the principle purposes of eating them. A semantic quibble, perhaps, but one which may have led to the OP’s questioning of your statement. Seems like a groundless distinction. The people weren’t simply killed on the spot, they were _kept_ for a sizable portion of their life expectancy. And they were _kept_ for the purpose of becoming food. And they knew that they were being kept as food animals. How would you describe this process? You say that it is inaccurate to say these people were kept for food, you presumably would object to saying they were farmed for food as tuna or cassowaries are farmed fo food. So how would you describe it? Enslaved for food? Maintained for food? The fact is that PC sensibilities aside these people were farmed and kept as food animals. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2006, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105/38 "2006-05-01T02:27:45Z")
> [@Blake](#): > > The fact is that PC sensibilities aside these people were farmed and kept as food animals. Right. :rolleyes: I’m only objecting to the terms you’re using to describe the practices in question out of political correctness. Give me a freaking break. “Farmed as food animals” is worse yet than “kept as food animals”, which you’ve got a slender case for. I must confess that is is eminently unclear from any of the sources that you linked that the slaves were kept (let alone raised, as in your cassowary and tuna examples) for the purpose of being eaten. Are you saying that the children of enemy tribes were captured and raised in order to eat? If not, what is the point of your New Guinean pig example? If they are capturing pigs and raising them to eat them, then yes they are being kept. If they are just capturing them to eat them, then that’s not “keeping”, that’s hunting. If they are being captured for use as draft animals (ignoring for a moment what lousy draft animals pigs would make), and then eaten at the end of their useful life, that’s not “keeping as food animals”, that’s “keeping as draft animals”. Each description of the Maori practices seemed to me to be of cases where slaves were kept for the purpose of being slaves, i.e., labour, and that in addition they were oft-times eaten after a period of time. Perhaps there are accounts which make it clearer that food was the only purpose, I don’t know. I would concede that if these slaves were kept for most of their lives for the sole purpose of being eaten, then “kept as food animals” would be a reasonable word to use. The impression I got from your cites was something rather different, though. The impression I got was that they were kept not as food animals, but as labour that had the bonus of being edible. I have no “PC” sensibilities on this topic. I was before today largely ignorant of Maori culture, but from what I’ve learned, I have absolutely no objections to you saying that the Maori engaged in nutritional cannibalism on a widespread basis. They ate slain enemies after battle, and often slaughtered prisoners of war for food. Other prisoners they kept as slaves, who were liable to end up in the cookpot on any given day. That much seems clear from what I’ve read. None of it strikes me as being anything that is appropriately called “keeping humans as food animals.” [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/people-as-food-animals/354105.md?page=1)