ABSTRACT
In most Western countries, the publication of cookbooks has multiplied in the post-war era. There are now books that deal with different geographical regions, different diets and different foodstuffs. This chapter describes the larger concern at stake that is how we deal with animal deaths in the contemporary West. It talks about the established and culinary authoritative view of animals and meat, and of the necessity of animal death that stands between those two. If the broad cultural tendency we have called biocentrism explains why we feel a need to conceal animal deaths, if it, as we have suggested, creates a thin line between carnivorism and cannibalism, that is still only one side of the coin. The killing and consuming of animals requires some kind of cultural contextualization that makes these animal deaths acceptable and meaningful.
