Dog meat consumption, a centuries-old practice on the Korean Peninsula, isn’t explicitly prohibited or legalized in South Korea
Why does eating dog meat bother meat eaters? What’s the difference between one animal and another?
The argument would be how intelligent the farmed creature is. People have a great connection with dogs due to the dog’s intelligence.
Problem is cows and pigs are also very intelligent. The only reason people are so comfortable eating them is they aren’t pets in a home for 99% of people. Out of sight, out of mind. So people feel it’s absurd to eat dog, because they can look up from their screen and see a dog happy for their attention, practically family.
I Guarantee if people were around a pig or a cow as a pet as often or regularly as dogs, we wouldn’t eat them.
You would think, but my wife’s cousin’s family had a pet pig and they come to family gatherings with pork-based dishes (not made from the pet).
In order to better live with the fundamental contradiction of loving animals but also eating them, people put some animals in the “pet” box and some in the “meat source” one with a one way street between the two, in that animals that would be considered meat sources can become pets but never the other way around.
I bet it subconsciously makes some people feel more compassionate towards animals. But it’s nothing more than a moral contradiction trying to be masked.
It makes sense to feel some sense of apprehension or even disgust when the topic of eating dogs is brought up because it feels so geographically and culturally distant from us, but the truth is you can see this happen across the relatively small European continent. Dog meat used to be a thing in Switzerland, maybe not anymore. Nordics will be horrified to learn cute bunnies are a very culturally relevant meat source down south in the Mediterranean (traditional paella contains both rabbit and chicken meat), where they are also kept as pets. France loves their horse meat but in other places of Europe this is unheard of. And so on.
Don’t get me wrong, I eat meat and have a couple of cats as housemates. You couldn’t pay me enough money to try cat meat. But I don’t pretend like it isn’t a fundamental contradiction, nor will you see me retching if I hear eating cats is a thing in some region/culture.
I think the particular issue with the dog meat industry is that it has high amounts of cruelty, even by meat industry standards. Iirc there’s the belief involved that if the dog suffers it makes the meat taste better. So at many farms they are often tortured before death and killed in painful ways. They are also kept in horrendous conditions. Farm animals are often kept in horrendous conditions as well, but generally that’s because of a lack of regulation and most people who oppose dog meat farms also oppose the mistreatment of farm animals as well.
Iirc there’s the belief involved that if the dog suffers it makes the meat taste better. So at many farms they are often tortured before death and killed in painful ways.
Do you have any sources on this? Not doubting you, I’m just genuinely curious.
I was in S. Korea with the U.S. Army Reserve back in '00 and one of the last nights we were there, we went off base to this local restaurant that was basically some Korean family’s living room and they cooked food in their private kitchen. We ordered one of everything, and one of the dishes was dog (gaegogi), which had already been slaughtered, so it wasn’t like we ordered it and they had to kill it for us. Does that make it any more moral or humane on our part? No, not at all. But it was a cultural dish, and we were there for the cultural experience. I remember hearing the same as you though, that there was some cultural belief that if the dog suffered before it died, the meat tasted better (something about the adrenaline running through it’s muscles or something like that, I dunno), so they would tie the dog up by its hide legs and sear the fur off it with a blow torch while it was still alive. That’s what we heard, anyway. Was it true? I dunno.
While I of course don’t agree with the inhumane treatment, if their culture is to eat dog, then it is. We eat beef in the U.S. and that’s horrific to Hindus, who believe cows are sacred. We don’t exactly treat beef cattle very well before we slaughter them either, for that matter. I think where eating meat is concerned, you’re either all-in or all-out. You can’t bash one culture for their cuisine and not take a deep look at your own as well and realize that they are all fucked up in their own way.
It bothers us because we know that dogs are relatively intelligent, often kind, feel pain and get sad. In many ways they act like children. We know this because many of us have pets or know people who have dogs as pets. Same thing for horses, to a lesser degree. This makes it harder to lie to yourself or ignore their suffering, and makes us feel bad about eating meat and the suffering that inevitably entails. If pigs, who are surprisingly intelligent, were common household pets, we’d feel bad about that too. But they aren’t, so we get to pretend that they’re stupid and don’t die in pain and in fear.
In many ways, it’s not much different to how most of us decide to pretend that child labour or slavery no longer exist, despite regular revelations about the suffering our consumerist purchasing decisions perpetuate. Or how we’re happy to buy unnecessary nonsense, replacing perfectly good clothes, replace a functional phone with the newest shiny thing, spend money on content that we could easily do without, rather than donate to a charity that could have prevented children and innocents dying needlessly. We know deep down that we’re choosing to let people die, we pretend we don’t so we can buy some more luxuries.
People are often evil. This is the baseline of human behaviour. We like to convince ourselves we’re not, by occasional acts of goodness.
Pigs are absolutely excellent companion animals in the same way, it’s well documented. My farmer friend has one for years and he was delightful. She had chickens who had wonderful funny personalities. There’s videos of cows playing with children and sleeping in their laps.
The logic just doesn’t make any sense. I see what you are saying, don’t get me wrong, but I just don’t get how people can “rescue” dogs and yet talk about how much they love bacon.
Social expectations. I raised a few pigs in 4H and while they were as smart as dogs, they were raised to be eaten and after being sad about my first one, the established idea that they exist to be eaten made it different than a dog who existed to protect the animals from wild predators. Heck, outside farm dogs and cats also have a different relationship than indoor dogs and cats becsuse of how everyone treated then when I was growing up.
So while I known in my mind that dogs raised to be eaten are seen in some places like pigs are here, it is just established as a different thing socially. Kind of like how many people are averse to eating squirrels and rabbits because they see them as small animals that hang out in their yards, not a food source.
The logic absolutely makes sense. One is more familiar to an average person and other is less. It’s not that hard to grasp lol.
Doesn’t make it any less of a double standard. Same with squids which apparently are relatively intelligent and we still eat them but for some reason dolphins are a no-go (are they endangered? Idk.).
Pigs aren’t suitable pets outside a farm. They’re too big, too strong, and far too intelligent. Remember watching a BBC documentary where they discussed how pigs are more intelligent than small children. They escape constantly exactly because they’re incredibly intelligent. Feral pigs are also dangerous and cause untold damage.
Neither are cows. Cows are much like dogs. They like playing fetch, playing football, listening to music, cuddling, etc. But they’re far too big and strong to keep as pets for most people.
To be clear, I’m not arguing that it’s more moral to eat a pig, dog or cow.
I’m arguing that people are more able to lie to themselves that eating a cow or pig is less bad, because they have less experience interacting with them. Just like the kid who died mining ore in a Congolese mine, that makes it easier to ignore their suffering.
e: here’s a short fragment from a BBC documentary about pigs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mza1EQ6aLdg
Shows how 6 week old piglets can grasp how a mirror works relatively easily. Something human children take far longer to grasp.
True. While I don’t think humanity doesn’t have to avoid consuming animal products as a whole it would be great if alternative protein sources were cheaply available (and ideally subsidized) so that cheap meat products become unappealing.
Simultaneously we should have a higher standard of treatment for animals and beef in particular should be much less available because of its extensive influence on the climate.
Really none of it is safe. When you think about how COVID is a zoonotic infection that jumped species, breeding animals for food and the conditions they are kept in, full of feces and infections, it’s not really a surprise.
Like in the past? When most of humanity was eating basically nothing but meat?
They were eating far less meat than we do today. They also respected animals a lot more usually, with a lot of cultural and religious rituals surrounding hunting.
A lot of pagan religions were about “gifts of the hunt/nature” and to not squander those gifts etc. People held a lot of respect for nature in a way we don’t today with our industrial meat farming.
This always was so strange to me.
I would eat a dog just as I would eat a horse or cow…
If the meat tastes awful I would understand, and I would not want to eat an animal I have an emotional bond with.
But any other animal is fair game to me.
I kept rats as pets, and I loved my rats and wanted no harm to come their way, but I have no problem calling the exterminator if there’s an infestation.
Those are not my rats, so why would I care?
The moral difference is the degree to which the creature can suffer and the capacity for it to flourish.
Suffering is a subjective experience, impossible to see any but your own. I experience so it’s likely humans do, other animals are similar and different to various degrees. Do you doubt the size of the animal’s brain or the configuration of their nervous systems has something to do with their capacity to experience suffering?
Flourishing considers the best potential life vs the worse potential life. Is it full-filling to be a cow just eating grass with the herd? Not in comparison to a human’s potential experiences. Could a pet cow have a fulfilling life with a loving owner as a pet dog? Not in all the same ways as it’s different, but perhaps it could have an equally high peak. As much as I know about a tuna fish, they won’t form as a meaningful bond with their owner - their peak life is not as high as a dog.
