Other people have probably thouhgt of this before, but I have never heard it suggested and I just now thought of it.
Animal shelters across America are over crowded. Some even have to turn animals away.
Animals that are not adopted are put to death.
People all over this country and other countries are starving. They need meat. They cannot afford it.
Homeless shelters spend thousands feeding the poor. All those Somolians seem to get from those ‘Feed the Children’ campaigns is wheat goop in a bowl. They could use some meat too.
Following me here? I know it may seem sick and twisted at first, but think about it for a second. I know people who raise cows and kill them and then eat them. Why is that any different? Why can’t the unwanted (what an awful word) animals that are going to be put to death anyway be sent to some doggy meat plant. I have seen animals put to death, and I know they are usually held and loved during those last seconds and it is made a tranquil as possible for the animals. But cows do not get that luxary. Cows are slaughtered! Why can’t these animals be shipped somewhere and packed the same way? They could find another nice way to do it since giving it the pink juice (i think it’s pink)would probably make it inedible. Wouldn’t this solve two problems at once? I am posting this here because I do not really have an opinion about this yet.
Before everyone rips me a new ass, I am just sharing a thought that crossed my mind. Don’t think I am some evil insensitive animal hater. I might be evil and insensitive, but I don’t hate animals.
We could also expand it and take care of our road kill problem. I think I run over enough armadillos and possums in one year to take care of the protien requirements for an average Somali village.
The thing is, the US already has the capacity to feed everybody in it, and a good bit of the rest of the world. We don’t use this capacity because:
a) it would reduce grain/produce prices by providing plentiful supply.
b) we’re using lost of farmland for livestock–which is highly inefficient. The amount of land needed to feed a cow for long enough for it to be raised and slaughtered would feed many more people a few times over.
Great Idea!
I do not consider the idea far fetched.
Koreans do eat dogs… granted the dogs from the pound here in the US are not breed for eating and not top quality taste. But hey if your starving anything tastes good.
Some south american Countries have Guinny pigs as a meal.
Not everyone in other countries has the same qualms about eating some animals that we do.
Yes, but this meat would be free and given to the homeless… so it would not change prices or anything. I understand the way the farmers and government want to control that whole food industry, but I do not think this would effect them.
This plan would not take much effort to impliment. Volunteers would just pick up a load of animals from the shelter instead of picking up food from a store. No one has to work harder or change their lives. Farmers can go on sitting on unfarmed land and collect their government checks. The rest of us can go on paying the same price for cow meat.
There are no losers here… except the dogs maybe, but they would have died anyway. Is it not better to serve a purpose by your death? I would love to die saving a life. When I am 109 years old, I would not hesitate to heave myself in front of a car to save a child. I might do it now, but I sure would hesitate.
And Bluephony, that meat is all rotten and nasty though. Live doggies are fresh! But we could feed the dogs the ground up remains of the road kill. I think they feed this protein powder made from roadkill to cows or something… someone help me with a link or more info on that.
Anyway, we could use the roadkill to make a protein food substance to fatten up the other dogs and then feed them to the homeless and starving and 3rd world inhabitants.
Look at that!! Now we have solved Three problems at once!!!
If you’re still able to launch yourself in front of a car at age 109, you deserve to live a heck of a lot longer than that. Now that’s something I’d pay to see.
Who know, this may even help some animals. After eating my roadkill protein substance, they will get all fat and healthy looking, and someone might even come in and adopt them. They will have a better chance getting adopted if they are fattened up a bit, instead of diseased looking and scrawny!
“Read”? Errr… that is the one thing I do not like about this message board. I have to read the posts. I cannot read a book without falling asleep.
Actually, no I haven’t read that. Did they propose what I just did? Was it a story? How did things work out?
The problem is not that there is an inadequate supply of food/protein. There is plenty of food. The problem has to do with distribution–both the mechanics of distributing food where it is needed and also the economic complications that occur when you try to “sell something for nothing.”
Also, I would argue that dog and cat meat would be too expensive on a price-per-pound basis. The efficiencies of modern factory farming allow chicken, turkey, beef, and pork to be incredibly cheap in the United States. Also, these animals have been bred over the years to have a great proportion of usable meat. An ordinary dog or cat would have a much smaller proportion of usable meat. My dog is 60 pounds. Most of that seems to be bone and skin. How much usable muscle and organ meat would there be? I would guess 15 pounds at most. Well, you could buy 15 pounds of USDA choice meat for less than 15 bucks on sale at the Shop-Rite. If you were to buy lower-grade (but still perfectly good) meat at wholesale prices, it would cost even less. It would probably cost you far more than 15 dollars to slaughter and inspect and butcher and package my dog, especially since he is “one-of-a-kind,” and therefore could not be butchered using efficient disassembly line techniques.
(Jeez, I always tell my adorable pup that he is so cute that I could just eat him up. Never before have I thought about whether it would be practical to do so! :eek: )
We’re going to skip these steps. “Inspect”? Forget that. It would happen like this:
Mary the Homeless shelter volunteer who runs the shelter off of donations and such needs to get food to feed everyone. It takes (big guesses coming up) 500 pounds of week to feed all the homeless there. That is 5000 dollars for very cheap meat. Instead, she drives a van down to the local shelter and picks up 33 dogs. OK that’s a lot. I bet they won’t have that many to give. She picks up 15 dogs. Then she gets some volunteers together and they all start ‘cleaning’ the dogs. Like how you clean a fish. Then they throw them in a pot. This saves the shelter about $2250.
Scenario 2:
We gather up a bunch of the mutts from all of the US shelters. Kinda like a canned food drive. Then we put the hundred of dogs on a plane with a BBQ grill and drop it off to the RED CROSS people in some third world country…
Yes I realize this. But not everyone can afford all of this food. Dog meat would be FREE at the shelter.
A Modest Proposal is a satire in which it is proposed that to solve hunger, we eat our babies, thus feeding the poor and solving population growth simultaneously.
Math error? If you need 500 pounds meat, that would cost $500, not $5000. I was figuring a cost of $1 per pound for meat, not $10. For $10 a pound you could get filet mignon and still have money left over for dessert.
I still contend that the costs involved in collection and preparation of the meat would far exceed cost of the food value of the meat–even if volunteers were used. Volunteer labor still costs money. You have to provide work space, supplies, sanitation, etc. Plus a pot big enough for 500 pounds of meat would be pretty darn expensive!
Also, you would have to have the meat inspected, or else it would be illegal. Now I know that this is just a hypothetical scenario (I hope, anyway) but you might as well factor in any forseeable variables. Of course “inspection” involves nothing more than paying a USDA guy to stand there and pick his nose. [preparing for flames and testimonials for kosher hot dogs]
Now if you could sell the bones, etc. to rendering plants, you might be able to make enough profit from that to subsidize the cost of the collection and butchering.
With regard to scenario #2–are you suggesting that the dogs be shipped live? What with the cost of air freight, wouldn’t be better to butcher the dogs before shipping?
And sadly, it would be no problem to get 33 dogs at a pop.
It was addressing specifically the number Irish poor of the time. Follow the link someone posted above-it’s not a really long essay. He uses the arguement that this would provide food, and at the same time reduce the excess population that was starving at the time.
