There are many taboos when it comes to food. In many places, eating grasshoppers, pigs’ liver, chicken hearts, dogs, cats and rabbits is a little bit “Satanic”, while in other places it is as normal as eating potatoes, why is that?
On explanation is morality: We love our cats, rabbits and dogs, they are our best friends, so eating them is too Satanic.
Another explanation is utility: In ancient Japan, nobody eats beefsteak, because farm cattle is a very valuable asset for a farmer, they only start eating beefsteak in modern time when farm cattle became obsolete.
A third explanation is that it has something to do with social standing: We never see a powerful figure, like George Soros eating grass hoppers, people who eat grass hoppers everyday will be considered a little bit too grass-root. So people would try their best avoiding those food.
After all, which explanation is best ? why do we have those taboos in the first place? do we still need them?
Beasts of burden where used to assist farming in other cultures, where they were eaten as well. So the question becomes … "why were Japanese cows purely valued as an aid to farming instead of both a food source and a farm aid?
The answer appears to be in the Buddhist concept of reincarnation.