Uh, there were definitely vegans before supermarkets.

Whilst the term "vegan" only came about in the 1940s, and the Vegetarian Society was founded as recently as 1847, the practice of not eating/harming animals has occurred in various places and to varying degrees for at least the past two and a half millennia.

Do they still hang the small animals up with one paw intact, so you know it is a rabbit (or whatever)?

Ah, rabbits! I remember them. Lots and lots of little bones but the meat tasted heavenly. They were cheap too in those days. Why can't you get rabbit any more?

Probably because growing rabbits for market is not a very profitable business. It's easy to produce supply, but harder to produce demand. I expect the same goes for frogs, although it is possible to find froglegs in some markets here. Duck isn't all that common, nor is mutton. Mostly it's beef, pork, and chicken. We do have one store that sells lamb and bison for high prices, but not duck, nor rabbit. It's entirely customer driven, AFAIK. They stock what sells. I will say that the Houston, Texas grocery market is one of the most competitive in the country. Several national chains have come in and failed. The big stores they built have been converted to other uses, and some are still empty. The only national chains here now are Kroger, Aldi, and WalMart. The local chains dominate, and I tend to patronize them because they're more local. People from other areas tend to be amazed at how cheap food is here, but the locals bemoan the high prices.

Horse meat was (is?) very popular in France.
If the butcher shop had a wooden or plastic cow's head over the door they sold beef. It it was a horse head, well........

Not too mention facial recognition, in our Lidl's as you enter the store a green box appears and tracks you as you enter, I'm sure it' scanning for your phone as well so you're tracked from start to end.

I saw rabbit in HEB for one week and then no more. Maybe they ran out?

I will buy ground bison or lamb once in a while for spaghetti sauce. Yummy! If you want to put a dark brown on bison it is almost impossible. Seems to resist even all but the highest searing.

One of the news reports said a meat packing plant in the US has almost 100% for covid yet not one person had symptom. Wonder if working with meat had some immunity like taxidermist have with anthrax.

You must be relatively near me, jefro. HEB has a rather small coverage area. That's where we shop almost always.

In the late 60s I was in the California Air National Guard. One year the summer camp was at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska (Anchorage). One night the mess hall served rabbit. I nearly hurt myself eating all I could. Very tasty...

Wouldn’t know where to find it know, and my wife probably wouldn’t want to eat it anyway. Still, a fond memory.

I don't know what sources they used, but rabbit used to be served every now and then on some offshore oil platforms I used to fly to. Cajun food is the staple there, and includes all sorts of delicacies from mudbugs to frog's legs to 'cubuyaw' (courtbouillon). Fricasseed rabbit is delicious. But as I said, I have no idea where they got it, and that was about 30 years ago.

HEB is all over Texas and maybe a few other of the lesser states.

(just kidding)

No, just Texas and not all over it. Growing slowly, but mostly just near the larger cities - San Antonio of course, Houston, Dallas, Austin, maybe a few more. I have family in other cities who are insanely jealous that I have one and they don't.

Actually what I said about rabbit goes for quite a few other meats too. Supermarkets sell a very restricted diet these days. You used to be able to get lovely little lambs' tongues and also neck of lamb that were both delicious when pressure-cooked. One shop in Kilburn sold big fat turkey tails which were imho the only bit of a turkey worth eating. When I was a child, we often ate "lights" (lungs) cooked in the Viennese way, minced and stewed with a bit of lemon juice and nutmeg and a bay leaf. All gone now!

As for horsemeat, you could get it at Smithfield market in the years immediately after the war but not in the shops. My mother worked in a print shop in Leather Lane, so she could buy meat there on the way home. Horse steak was the only thing I ever tried, but it is delicious, much like beefsteak but tenderer. My father ate camel meat in Africa during the war and said it was even nicer.

^ Just another way in which global growth economy fosters monoculture, slowly destroying our habitat.
It's true, most of the diversity seen in supermarkets is in brands & packaging, not in actual raw ingredients.

A good question! I used to make rabbit stew regularly, but the last time I saw it was years ago — imported from China! But I can still get venison, and a couple of weeks ago I had pigeon.