I’ve spoken to survivors of that siege. I was told the rats and mice disappeared (i.e. were eaten) after the cats, dogs, horses, etc. After the rats, mice, and roaches… well, I couldn’t ask about the neighbors. Let’s just say the survivors were some of the least picky eaters you could imagine.
Our neighbors have been raising a few pigs each year. I’ve helped them with their care a little. My gf spent some time with them and subsequently decided to give up pork, as they’re just too intelligent to eat.
The first time I made pulled pork for me and a big salad for her, she gave in and we both had pork and salad.
I haven’t given up on pork, but I’ve cut way back. And i only buy pork that i think has been reared humanely. Pigs are too intelligent and sensitive to rear them in concrete pens, without social contact with other pigs.
I sometimes get bacon at restaurants, and pork-based soups and dumplings at Chinese places, though.
Around the time of the ‘Horse Meat Scandal’ in 2013 (2013 horse meat scandal - Wikipedia) I asked my local butcher if they could source me any horse-meat, as I was curious, and was met with disgusted astonishment. But they had no qualms about selling me a couple of zebra steaks (quite tasty). So that brought home how arbitrary/cultural this sort of thing is.
made me remember this
n 1981, horse meat labeled as beef was discovered at a Foodmaker plant that supplied hamburger and taco meat to Jack in the Box .
There is a city in Northern Vietnam named Lạng Sơn (pop 200,000) where the regional specialty is dog. Cite Chris Arnade:
After my dinner, I walked for another three hours, taking in the night life, and realizing almost half the beer halls, including ones over on the ‘fancy” side of town, specialized in dog meat.
I went back to my hotel depressed, and honestly, grossed out. I was also a little frustrated with myself.
Lạng Sơn, despite the whole eating dog thing, was a perfectly fine town. Sweet in the way all Vietnamese cities seem to be. Everyone was willing to help me. Everyone was wanting to engage in some small talk, no matter how little English they spoke, even if only enough to say, “Hello”!
All was good in Lạng Sơn, except the dog eating thing. …
I don’t want to turn Lạng Sơn into the poster child of people who eat dogs. There is a lot more going on there than that. It’s a nice town.
Dog is also sold in Hanoi and advertised in block leaders on at least one food cart in front of a beer hall.
Leaders*=Leashes.
Nope, nope, nope.
Not on my bucket list.
Might need a bucket 
*I realize you meant block Letters
Typos can be weird.
To be fair, reports of dog eating tend to be from northern Vietnam. Efforts to ban the practice tend to center in the south. As noted upthread, the pet trade seems to be expanding in Vietnam, reflected in the increasing number of pet shops. It is a growing but still poor country with a GDP per person of $4,200 per year and a weak currency. (Adjusted for lower prices, per person GDP is about $13,500.)
It isn’t just “arbitrary/cultural” – there’s a lot of economic efficiency involved, too.
Zebra meat might be quite tasty, but zebras (and horses, llamas, camels, etc.) are all far less efficient meat-producers than modern beef cattle. They are harder to domesticate, reproduce slower, need more expensive feed, and produce less meat from that feed.
This is true of most of our commonly eaten animals.
Both chicken & pork are very good at turning feed (often feed that humans can’t eat) into meat protein quite efficiently. Thus other fowl, like goose, duck, pigeon, squab, cornish game hens, etc. have become expensive items reserved for special occasions.
Much of what we eat (and thus our cultural biases) are based on what we can economically produce to feed humans. And this has been reinforced because humans have learned to breed animals for the traits we desire.
Your argument sounds valid, but I wasn’t saying that the animals a given people raise for meat is ‘arbitrary/cultural’; it was about the disgust-reaction from the butcher. It makes no sense to find eating standard horse abhorrent, yet exotic-horse (zebra) acceptable.
Horse meat may be found in the meat department of any supermarket in… not everywhere, but many countries, so I wonder where this butcher was? The United States is the world’s #6 producer of horse meat, around 29,000 tonnes per year.
The butcher was round the corner from me in Bristol, UK. From what I can gather (attitudes may have changed without me noticing) horse-meat consumption is still considered a dubious ‘continental’ (e.g. French) habit by most Brits.
Few sights turn my stomach, but one that I saw years ago—a video (from Vietnam, as I recall) showing how cat and dog meat was prepared—really did, and still does if I think about it.
I look forward to the day when most, if not all, of the world’s meat is lab-grown. In the meantime, slaughterhouses should be held more accountable and responsible for cruelty: at least dispatch slaughter animals quickly and humanely (e.g., with a captive bolt pistol) and allow them better lives pre-slaughter.
Predator vs Prey: For one thing, predator animals typically don’t taste as good to our palate as prey animals. But I also believe predators such as cats and dogs are, in general, more intelligent than prey animals such as cows and sheep, and therefore, their capacities for self-awareness and suffering should be more significant. This is based on the cognitive demands of predation since hunting demands high levels of problem-solving, planning, and memory capacities. With few exceptions, the social behavior of predators tends to show more complexity, such as cooperation and empathy, which indicates somewhat higher cognitive abilities. In addition, predators have a relatively larger brain size and development of higher-order processing brain areas.
Moreover, in general, predators show much more behavioral flexibility, thereby altering their actions depending on new information and changes in the environment—a sign of intelligence. For example, evidence suggests that some predators, such as dogs and cats, exhibit behaviors that point to self-awareness and emotional complexity, thereby possibly indicating that the capacity for suffering is more significant, compared to that of prey animals.
I’ve never seen horse meat for sale for human consumption in the United States. My parents used to buy it as dog food when I was a child; but I haven’t seen it on a pet food ingredients label in many years.
I wonder if the US doesn’t export that 29,000 tonnes; or at least most of it.
Pope Gregory III banned the eating of horsemeat as a “pagan abomination” and a mortal sin.
Serious question- on what grounds? IIRC “What the Lord has declared clean, let no man declare unclean. Take thee up and eat.”
I guess the grounds were that eating horsemeat is something pagans did.
Apparently there were some pagan groups active then (732 CE) that ate horsemeat at ritual festivals.
(I suspect that the economic value of horses, for plowing fields, for transporting goods, people, and soldiers, also entered into this prohibition.)