In the Song Dynasty, it was clearly stipulated that members of the royal family were forbidden to eat precious ingredients such as bear's paw, so mutton became the main meat of the royal family. The royal family in Song Dynasty loved mutton mainly because of its great medicinal value. They think mutton has an aphrodisiac effect, and Song Taizu has formulated relevant ancestral rules. What is the emperor's rule? National laws? Therefore, the later emperors must abide by it, so the emperors of the Song Dynasty took mutton sheep as their staple food.
It is precisely because of this regulation that sheep in the Song Dynasty were almost eaten to the point of extinction. Of course, this also exaggerated the composition, but the mutton in the Song Dynasty was really in short supply at that time. The main reason is that there are too few places to produce sheep in Song Dynasty. At that time, most of the areas where sheep could be raised on a large scale were in the hands of other countries, and the relationship between Song Dynasty and these countries was not very good, and the import of mutton was also very unstable, which led to the shortage of sheep in Song Dynasty and the unstable import of foreign sheep.
The rule of Zhao Kuangyin in Song Dynasty and the royal family's love for mutton led to the scarcity of mutton in Song Dynasty. There were several places where sheep were produced in the Northern Song Dynasty, but in the Southern Song Dynasty, mutton became more scarce because it moved south. At that time, not many people ate pork and dog meat, which made the price of mutton rise steadily. At the most expensive time, the price of a sheep is as high as thirteen times. It is impossible for ordinary people to eat mutton.