Why are Cats and Dogs Sacred in the USA?

[gonzomax]

If you think people treat dogs and cats reverently just read about Micheal Vick. Then go to a shelter and see how many dogs and cats are there for abuse. Then note how many are there because the owners just don’t want them anymore. Millions being put to death every year. This kind of reverence I would not want.

[Dinsdale]

@acsenray

As Cal says, it’s not the entire story. Old horses that are no longer fit for work are perfectly edible, but it’s still not accepted to send a retired horse to the slaughterhouse (in America anyway).

There was an incident in the Chicago area recently where a trailer (improperly over) loaded with draft horses crashed, killing and injuring several. IIRC, they were headed from Indiana, to a slaughterhouse in Minnesota - one of very view to process horses.

ISTR the newspaper articles at the time commented on the difficulty/cost of maintaining draft horses after their productive years, as they burned through an impressive amount of hay.

[wonky]

@Dinsdale

There was an incident in the Chicago area recently where a trailer (improperly over) loaded with draft horses crashed, killing and injuring several. IIRC, they were headed from Indiana, to a slaughterhouse in Minnesota - one of very view to process horses.

Horse meat is used in at least some dog foods (like Bil-Jac, I think), so there’s a market. But I don’t know how big of one.

[Acsenray]

Horse slaughter is a pretty controversial practice. If I recall correctly, there are only three operating horse slaughterhouses in the United States, and nearly all the meat is exported to places like France. There is a politically connected movement headed by the Humane Society seeking to shut them down to prevent such slaughter even for the export market.

[Mister_Rik]

@t-bonham@scc.net

Cats have hardly any usable meat at all

Kind of the same way I look at “baby back ribs”

I also think it’s worth sharing this.

[Broomstick]

@Dinsdale

There was an incident in the Chicago area recently where a trailer (improperly over) loaded with draft horses crashed, killing and injuring several. IIRC, they were headed from Indiana, to a slaughterhouse in Minnesota - one of very view to process horses.

Not quite right - the crash itself was in Indiana, the horses weren’t from Indiana. Pretty horrible, a trailer overloaded with draft horses overturning. Screaming, panicked horses - some had to be put down on the scene, some later.

ISTR the newspaper articles at the time commented on the difficulty/cost of maintaining draft horses after their productive years, as they burned through an impressive amount of hay.

Regular horses burn through lots of hay (I used to work at a horse farm) - it’s a problem with people acquiring horses without realizing just how much they eat every day. Draft horses are an even worse case.

[jali]

@acsenray

I also came here to recommend Marvin Harris. Jali, Don’t ignore this. Harris is essential to understanding cultural eating practices; otherwise, you’ll be burdened with several half-truths and wild-ass-guesses.

For example, it’s not true that no one eats an animal they treat as companions. Harris talks about Polynesians who raise their pigs as members of the household, even nursing them alongside their children. But, when it comes to feast time, the pigs are still eaten.

In general, food choices have to do with the environmental conditions in the places where the traditions originated. Jews and Muslims today avoid eating pork because it’s a religious taboo. But that taboo originated in a fact that the deforestation of the Middle East made raising pigs for food an enivornmental burden. The same is true of cows in India, but in a slightly different way; they became too valuable as draft animals and sources of dairy to be eaten.

Animals that are not worth the energy to catch/raise/eat in calorical terms often become shunned, like insects or other non-mammals in places where large domesticated mammals and fowl are available.

Carnivores such as cats and dogs are usually not raised for food because they consume way too much in calories than they provide in meat.

Thank you! I’ll check it out!

[jali]

@CalMeacham

On the whys and wherefores of what’s good to eat and what isn’t, I recommend (as I frequently do here) anthropologist Marvin Harris’ book Good to Eat (duh.), also called The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig (Harruis claimed he changed the title because too many people thought Good to Eat sounded like a cook book.)
A few brief snippets from the book (but note that this is not the whole case, which has much more to buttress it than these "index card’ arguments.)
People don;t generally raise dogs and cats as food, because hey eat meat. If you have the meat already, you can eat that, and you don’t need the dog or cat (which isn’t going to be 100% efficient, anyway). Eating cows, goats, sheep, and other grass-eaters, on the other hand, doesn’t have that difficulty. People who do eat dog don’t eat it as a staple – it’s a luxury. And such people usually don’yt have a lot of large domesticated ruminants to eat. Dog was big in Polynesia and North America, none of which have cows, goats, and the like; Polynesians have non-domesticated pig. The Chinese and Koreans have other animals to eat, but dog isn’t exactly a staple.
I don’t know of any group that eats cat.

Thank you too for the name of the anthropologist. I have some research to do.

[Dinsdale]

@Broomstick

Not quite right - the crash itself was in Indiana, the horses weren’t from Indiana. Pretty horrible, a trailer overloaded with draft horses overturning.

This was the accident I was referring to. Occurred in Wadsworth, IL, a small town N of Chicago, near the Wisconsin border. Article says they were coming from IN going to MN.

May have been similar incidents in IN - I don’t know.

[BwanaBob]

@CalMeacham

This is also part of Harris’ Cultural Materialism explanation. But, even if dogs weren’t useful, we still wouldn’t go eating them because they’re inefficient. They’re tough to hunt. and if you tried to game-farm them, you’d end up spending too much meat (that you could eat yourself, directly) to feed them. We don’t raise lions on farms for food, no matter how “regal” it might be, because it’s just not worth the effort, and you could get a lot more meat yourself by eating what you’d feed them.

I keep reading this and I think to myself that I wouldn’t give the carnivore meat that I would eat, they would get the scraps, stuff that would have been thrown away regardless. When’s the last time you ate a chicken and literally left bare bone? I bet the answer is never.

[CalMeacham]

I keep reading this and I think to myself that I wouldn’t give the carnivore meat that I would eat, they would get the scraps, stuff that would have been thrown away regardless. When’s the last time you ate a chicken and literally left bare bone? I bet the answer is never.

I think dogs are raised on scraps in places in the Orient where they do get eaten. But you can’t base an industry on scraps. Cattle can roam, Chickens get grain (and what they can find), but I;m not sure you can raise a significant number of dogs on just scraps. Even in places where dog was eaten, it was still a luxury. and a rarely-eaten treat.

We have an industry that produces dog food using less wanted pieeces of meat, but we’re an affluent society that can afford it.

[Acsenray]

@BwanaBob

I keep reading this and I think to myself that I wouldn’t give the carnivore meat that I would eat, they would get the scraps, stuff that would have been thrown away regardless.

As Cal said, that might do for your household dog. You won’t make a profit that way.

When’s the last time you ate a chicken and literally left bare bone? I bet the answer is never.

Wrong! When I eat chicken, there is no meat left. I also eat the cartilage and I also crack open the bones to suck the marrow. Anyway, aren’t you supposed to avoid giving bird bones to dogs because the way in which it breaks creates a hazard for them?

[CalMeacham]

It occurs to me that there’s nothing in Harris’ Culturasl Materialism theory that would keep you from eating your own hand-raised dog. Hand-raised dogs are eaten (again, not exactly as staples) elsewhere in the world. There’s nothing that wwould keep you from eating your pet horse, either (and it can simply graze, if you want it to). Certainly other factors come into play besides a (very broadly defined) economic necessity. But the economic facts of life DO prevent a big market in dog meat.

There IS a market in horsemeat, although not as big as it could be. Harris has a whole chapter devoted to horses.

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Dinsdale

There was an incident in the Chicago area recently where a trailer (improperly over) loaded with draft horses crashed, killing and injuring several. IIRC, they were headed from Indiana, to a slaughterhouse in Minnesota - one of very view to process horses.

There is NOT a “slaughterhouse in Minnesota” – the horses were headed for an auction barn here.

There were only 3 slaughterhouses in the USA that accepted horses; all three are now closed to horses. There are some in Canada, and it’s possible that some of these horses would have been sold at auction to someone who would take them to Canada and eventually sell them to a slaughterhouse, but that is just speculation at this point.

Also, that truck was not overloaded; it was licensed to carry much heavier weight than these horses. When it is loaded with cattle or pigs in normal hauling, they are much heavier. It overturned because the driver ran a red light and was hit by another vehicle.

[E-Sabbath]

Poor southern-midwestern Americans have been known to eat cat. That’s how it got the nickname of ‘roof rabbit’. Not common, more common in the early part of the century.

[puppygod]

@acsenray

As Cal said, that might do for your household dog. You won’t make a profit that way.

Actually, in a dog-eating culture you CAN make profit that way. Those korean dog farms aren’t charities

But of course it’s luxury meat, not basic subsistience food.

[Dinsdale]

@t-bonham@scc.net

There is NOT a “slaughterhouse in Minnesota” – the horses were headed for an auction barn here.
Also, that truck was not overloaded; it was licensed to carry much heavier weight than these horses. When it is loaded with cattle or pigs in normal hauling,…

Sorry for the mistake re: slaughterhouse/auction. I think I knew that. Don’t know why I thought at least some of the horses would end up being slaughtered after auctiuon. My bad. Perhaps some of the news coverage discussed the difficulty of dealing with unwanted horses, as processing was not a viable option in the US. I don’t know.

Re: overloading - I was not referring to weight. My understanding was that it was highly suspect to ship draft horses in what I understood to be a doubledeck trailer designed for hauling cattle and swine. Would you object to “improperly loaded”?

But thanks for the clarification. Sorry to spread inaccurate info in GD.

[Tim_T-Bonham.net]

@Dinsdale

Re: overloading - I was not referring to weight. My understanding was that it was highly suspect to ship draft horses in what I understood to be a doubledeck trailer designed for hauling cattle and swine. Would you object to “improperly loaded”?

I object to any hauling of any horses in a doubledeck trailer!
Unfortunately, it’s legal in most states. (Even here in Minnesota, it’s ‘semi-legal’ – it’s allowed provided the horses “are able to stand in a normal, upright posture”, with no definition of what that is. Generally, the ceiling height is low and horses have to stand with their heads at least partially lowered. As a 20-year Director of the Minnesota Horse Council, I’d sure like to see that tightened up.)

But this loading didn’t cause the accident nor the tipover of the trailer – that was all the fault of the driver. He’s been arrested, but will probably get less punishment than I think he deserves.

[Broomstick]

@Dinsdale

This was the accident I was referring to. Occurred in Wadsworth, IL, a small town N of Chicago, near the Wisconsin border. Article says they were coming from IN going to MN.

May have been similar incidents in IN - I don’t know.

Yes, there was and quite recently. Outside Michigan City, Indiana

[Alan_Smithee]

@acsenray

Horse slaughter is a pretty controversial practice. If I recall correctly, there are only three operating horse slaughterhouses in the United States, and nearly all the meat is exported to places like France. There is a politically connected movement headed by the Humane Society seeking to shut them down to prevent such slaughter even for the export market.

Why? I didn’t think the Humane Society as an organization was against the slaughter of animals per se (though of course many individual members and staff would be), only against practices that cause unnecessary suffering. What are the arguments against humane slaughter of horses for food?