10 ANIMAL FOOD SUPPLIES 



the majority. Class distinctions everywhere apparently accounted 

 for considerable differences in the amount of animal food in the 

 dietary ; the quantities available ranged from comparative super- 

 fluity for the feudal nobility in the earlier, and for the landowners 

 and wealthier townsfolk in the later centuries, to a mere subsistence 

 level, and in times of distress, even less than that for the agricultural 

 workers and poorer classes generally. It may indeed be fairly safely 

 said that these latter classes were more or less habitually underfed, 

 particularly in animal foodstuffs, except during times of unusual 

 abundance. The prevalence of the common-field system through- 

 out Europe with the mingling of the herds of the different culti- 

 vators in each village community, was a positive bar to the 

 scientific breeding and improvement of farm animals, besides 

 encouraging the rapid spread of animal diseases. The change to 

 the modern intensive forms o( agriculture and animal husbandry, 

 which enabled a large supply of animal foodstuffs to be produced 

 from a limited area, came only after the abolition of this system in 

 a later time. It is interesting to note that the first steps towards 

 high-farming methods were made in Flanders in the 15th and 16th 

 centuries. 1 



Beginning with the 17th century, a third stage in the develop- 

 ment of European supplies of animal foodstuffs is to be dis- 

 tinguished. The period covered by this stage lasted till about 

 1875, when cheap transportation and refrigeration made the 

 movement of large supplies from one country to another possible. 

 Before this date each country had to rety almost entirely upon its 

 own local production of animal foodstuffs, since no practical means 

 of transport existed for conveying meat cheaply over long distances 

 without great risk of loss. Live animals could be driven, or even 

 conveyed (after the introduction of railways), but these methods 

 of transport were of limited use. Supplies were still largely 

 localised, so that abundance might exist in one region while in 

 another, at a distance, there might be a great shortage. Down to 

 the middle of the 19th century also, tariff barriers actively hindered 

 free movement between one country and another. Throughout 

 this later period, as in the Middle Ages, supplies of meat and dairy 

 produce do not seem to have been regularly sufficient to furnish 

 all classes, including the peasantry, with an adequate quantity of 

 animal foodstufts, except during the height of the season. Great 

 improvements were made, especially during the 18th and 19th 

 centuries, in stock-breeding, but the increase in population tended 

 to overtake advances in animal husbandry. Large areas, formerly 

 covered with forest or otherwise unoccupied, had been cleared, and 

 game thus became rather a luxury for the wealthy than a continuous 

 source of food for any important part of the population. Grazing 

 lands came to be occupied for agricultural purposes as the advancing 

 population made greater grain supplies necessary for its subsistence. 



1 Encyclopedia Brit., Edition 1911. Article on Agriculture. Vol. I. p. 389. 



