I recently saw a website that was expressing its horror at people eating dogs in Korea. Now while I have never eaten a dog, I got to wondering why some animals are expected to live a life of misery and ultimatley death for our food (battery farmed chickens spring to mind) and others are not? Also do people who live in the more affluent west have the right to tell people who may not have the luxury of being able to choose, what to eat?
Expect to see this moved to Great Debates.
But… dogs are CUTE! Widdle puppies with their humanoid short noses and round faces and big eyes. It would be IMMORAL to eat a widdle doggie!
Eat the thing for all I care, assuming you didn’t steal it from anyone.
And horse is supposed to be pretty decent, too, btw.
I had a Vietnames immigrant kid tell me that if you got that hungry, like so many people he’d known, you’d eat the dogs too.
And no doubt the Hindus in India would express similar horror at the idea of Americans eating cows!
Just like Moslems look with horror on Americans eating pork.
And Americans look with horror on the European habit of eating horsemeat.
The religious/cultural taboos defining which animals are considered suitable for eating are quite interesting, and quite different across cultures.
I once had a college professor tell me that in an overcrowded future world, people will look back in horror at our time’s habit of burying bodies, thus wasting all that perfectly good protein. (Personally, I hope that stays far in the future!)
I think that MacDonalds have already cornered the market your professor mentions t-bonham! I personnaly think all animals are fair game as long as they are not endangered - i’m having pot roast poodle and mashed cat for dinner tonight if anyone fancys it.
The meat eating habits of the future will probably involve vat-grown or organically printed meat (tissue-printing is already in development)
So you could eat all the horseflesh, human or dogflesh you want without ever killing any living beings.
A little further down the road the printed meat could be entirely imaginary- dragon or basilisk flesh anyone?
Sci-fi worldbuilding at
http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html
I dread the day that meat becomes a uniform mass produced vat grown product…where would we be without corn fed chicken, wild boar raised on chestnuts, and game that has lived on a varied and natural diet. I choose to eat meat rarely, but when I do I like to choose good quality farm assured produce. Vat grown or organically printed meat would surely not have any of the flavours and textures that come from a well reared animals lifestyle. Happy animals make tasty meat!
There’s a chapter devoted to eating dogs and other pets in anthropologist Marvin Harris’ Good to Eat (AKA The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig). He maintains that the main reason people don’t eat dogs is that you have to feed dogs meat in the first place, so it’s not energetically cost-effective. You might as well eat the meat yourself, and get more of it. (I note further that, in places where dog is eaten, it’s considered a delicacy and a luxury). In addition, dogs are useful as guard animals and herders. Similarly, people don’t eat cats – they’re carnivores, too, and effective pest-control devices (more than likely the reason they were domesticated in the first place). Better to regularly eat ungulants, who eat the grass people can’t eat.
The fact that dogs are cute and cuddly and are honored pets contributes nowadays, too, but pigs can be cute and cuddly and pets. And they’re said to be as intelligent as dogs. But this doesn’t give people a horror of eating pork and ham and bacon.
Any thoughts on live monkey brains?
Or IMHO more likely.
I don’t have a problem with eating dogs. Well actually, I do, but I accept that that is mostly a product of my Western sensibilities.
What I do have a problem with is the Korean idea that a traumatised dog is a tastier dog.
Is that true? Do Koreans actually think that they taste better when traumatised or is it just what someone has said after seeing them in tiny bamboo cages? We keep chickens in appalling conditions and that makes them taste much worse than free range birds. If you dont draw a distinction between dogs being pets or being food, is it actually any more cruel than what we do to food animals in the west? Seeing as pigs are supposed to be very intelligent then probably not…
So basically, if all you meat-eaters would just stop eating meat, perhaps we could all get on 
except with the breathairians and fruitairians you vegetable murdering monster!
on a more serious note I do think the mass production of meat needs to be curbed somewhat, although I dont beleive we are supposed to be strictly vegetarian. We should however use as much of the animal as possible and treat it with respect, giving it a happy and natural life before dispatching with the aformentioned beast in a humane way. Taking a life for food is a privalige not a right - this is why I have more respect for people who hunt purley for food rather than sport. These people generally use as much of the animal as possible and also see the ‘business end’ of slaughter, in that it is not a pleasant experience. Before you go out and buy that cellophane wrapped steak for your weekend BBQ just think where it came from and wonder whether you could do the same. If not you should think twice about eating meat.
The dogs of today bear little resemlance to the dogs of old. Either consiously or unconisiously, man has shown favor on the dogs that seem to be friendlier to him. This has altered the gene pool enough that today’s dogs are totally enamered with humans. To eat them seems to be a total betrayal of this trust, and why I find it immoral. As a meat eater myself, I will be the first one to say I’m a hypocrite.
Sureley the same goes for all domesticated animals? Have you never seen the look of benign friendliness and trust on a cows doey eyed face - just before its turned into burger meat? We cant really distinguish between animals on how friendly they are as to whether we eat them or not, otherwise crocs and hippos would be top of the menu - along with cats…there kinda unfriendly.
Well, I never saw any dogs in tiny bamboo cages when I was in Korea. Mostly they were in tiny wire mesh cages…
From what my students told me, however, it is true that some Koreans (read that as old-fashioned, country-hick types) do believe that a dog tastes better when traumatised to death.
For the record, though, eating dog is no longer very common in Korea. Very often, when the topic came up in class I (foreign teacher) would be the only one present in the room who had tried it.
WILLASS-"*Is that true? Do Koreans actually think that they taste better when traumatised or is it just what someone has said after seeing them in tiny bamboo cages? *"
Here’s a previous thread on this subject:
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=115557&highlight=KOREANS
Really astro? what was it like? how was it prepared? do you know what breed it was? would you recomend it? have you tried a traumatised and non-traumatised dog to taste the difference? like a kind of Pepsi challenge gone horribly wrong! I am genuinley interested…i’ve got my eye on my neighbours Labrador.
These things will still be available as high-priced luxury items. Never fear. The rich will still be able to live lives of variety and happiness while the proles will end up on a diet of homogeneous pre-processed People Chow (but they’ll still have a choice of two flavors).