Eating Dog In China. It's Very Complex. Very.

on a hungry day anybody will eat anything.

This doesn't answer your question at all, but it's funny how vastly different cultures are with Hong Kong, which is culturally so close to China.

A few years ago, when Hong Kongers reported seeing dog meat sold at a ParkNShop over the border in Shenzhen, there was an uproar, over both moral and health issues. Dog meat is illegal here in HK, but legal in China. ParkNShop is Hong Kong owned.

Sometimes Hong Kong guys, trying to prove how tough and rebellious and mainland-y they are, will brag of eating dog-meat. (The codeword is apparently the number "9", which sounds like the word for "dog" in Cantonese). But push comes to shove, I've only met one or two people who will actually admit to having tried dog.

There is a funny tone-deaf-ness towards the issue. I was having a working lunch when a Chinese host asked me what kinds of foods I liked. I said I preferred vegetarian, though I am not a strict vegetarian (not like you). We chatted along and she -- totally casually -- asked if I liked to eat dog. Not a big deal, but something of a social mis-fire, to ask that of someone who generally doesn't eat meat!

No, it's not a black and white ethical issue, but one of social mores -- most people feel uncomfortable eating animals that we keep for pets, helping the blind, searching for disaster victims, etc.

I've eaten them all: dog, donkey, horse, turtle, tortoise, snake, shark, whale. None of these things did I eat willingly, but out of a habit ingrained in me by what was a far-from-prosperous upbringing of simply eating whatever was put in front of me. None of them were, in my view, worth the slight feeling of moral hazard that came when I found out what I had eaten. In fact most of them tasted pretty awful, especially the whale, which was essentially just greasy, off-tasting blubber foisted on me by a Japanese fascist who was trying to score a point.

Yes, I know that there is no real distinction between eating dogs and eating - say - pigs, which are equally as intelligent (I worked for a few weeks on a pig farm when I was in high-school, so I know what I talk about). However, I am also a creature of my upbringing, and I was brought up around dogs. It feels an awful betrayal of them to eat them, so I won't.

On the other hand, I know that this distinction cannot apply to people who do not have the same background as myself. I therefore do not criticise anyone who eats dogs simply for doing so. What I do criticise is the unnecessarily cruel conditions in which dogs raised for slaughter are kept and killed, what I do criticise if the theft of dogs for the purpose of selling them as meat - but this goes for other animals as well.

As late as Victorian Era, Europeans used to eat dogs and cats. (Well documented by poems of the time).

I once commented that this is an issue between Moralities and Traditions, and it is relative.

Some may say, Chinese (and other Asians) should catch up to the Moralities of the West.

Others might say, Why have modern Europeans lost their ancient cultural heritage of eating dogs and cats?

(Same could be said of Whaling, Native American tribes and Japanese claim that Whaling is their cultural tradition, and should be protected and allowed).

In the end, the story is about Europeans having given up their cultural traditions of eating certain animals (in preference of eating more of other types of animals, and thus establishing a new cultural tradition of meat eating), and whether Asians should do the same.

This is where I find the general concept of Morality to be dubious. Most Indians consider cows to be sacred, shouldn't they be outraged that most of the world is eating beef?

and keeping "pet" to "love"? Dogs on leashes and Cats in doors as toys for amusement and entertainment of humans is hardly "love". It's a receipe for animal abuse, animal over-population, dog fight rings, trained attack dogs, etc.

If humans really "love" dogs and cats, we should reverse the centuries of "domestication" and turn the animals back to the wilderness for their "freedom".

What makes humans think that we have any more rights to keep the animals as "pets" than eating them?

As far as history goes, both domesticating animals for meat and pets can be traced back to about the same traditions.

A very complex topic, indeed, but much more manageable once we drop our deeply-rooted biases and prejudices and instead embrace our common-sense, mainstream ethical intuition. 


To address Dan’s original post: No, there is no ethical distinction between eating a dog and eating any common, Western food animal. We should all, East, West, North and South, strive to consume fewer animals.

The use of animals for food is, except in extreme cases of necessity (which are rarely present and not helpful to get bogged down in), not ethically justifiable. This reasoning is twofold. First, all animals (human and non-human alike) possess an intrinsic life interest, which encompasses a right to live free of undue suffering. Eating animals and animal products deprives animals of this intrinsic life interest in a fundamental way. By negative implication, not eating animals would reduce human-imposed suffering and prolong the lives of animals (or prevent their coming into a suffering existence in the first place). Humans are thus not ethically justified in their use of animals for food unless the benefit to an individual human’s life interest outweighs the suffering inflicted on animals in so doing.

This goes to the second half of the reasoning why eating meat is ethically unjustifiable: avoiding the consumption of animal products is easy and healthful, and abstention from animal products results in no human suffering. Because no human life interest is compromised by not eating animals, there is no justification to violate the life interest of an animal simply to turn that animal into an entree.

Nothing above pertains only to a certain type of animal. There is no reason to distinguish between the life interest of a dog or cat and the life interest intrinsic to a pig or a chicken. This fundamental interest (the right to “flourish” free of undue suffering) is shared by all beings, even though the discrete qualities that make up that interest will vary among species and individuals.

The sticking point for most people will be in acknowledging that the cost of eating animals outweighs the benefit to the humans who eat them. This conclusion, however, is common-sense, mainstream intuition. First, we intuit that less suffering is preferable to more suffering. We also intuit that suffering inflicted unjustifiably is wrong. Third, we know from observation and relevant evidence that the production, housing and slaughter of animals for food causes tremendous suffering. (I would say that this is a mainstream view today, particularly in the context of so-called factory farms, which produce approximately 98% of all animal-based foods consumed in the USA.) Couple this with the fact that the joy/benefit humans gain from eating animals is minimal as compared to the suffering endured by food animals. Ask most people, “Why do you eat animal products” and they will answer, “because they taste good.” We know that humans can live long(er), healthy(ier) lives without consuming animal products, saying nothing of the environmental consequences that stem from mass consumption of animals.

Does this mean that those who eat animals are bad people? Hardly. A lapse in ethical judgment does not diminish a whole person, particularly where there is no malicious intent. I would, however, suggest that the more we strive to be conscientious, ethical beings, the better off we all are. We must let our hearts be our guide. We should not wish any fate upon an animal raised for slaughter that we would not wish upon a beloved family pet. This is not a cultural issue -- it is more fundamental.

Several years ago I came to a theory about what animals people will or will not eat. It is the cuteness-edibility bell curve. The closer to either end of the bell curve of cuteness, the less likely someone will eat the animal. Whereas, the closer to the center of the curve, the more likely someone will eat the animal. What is cute is culturally defined. Thus, what one culture finds at the center of the cuteness-edibility scale and thus edible, another culture may place at the inedible ends of the scale. Nevertheless, cuteness is subjective and as a result each person may drift from the norm of the culture they are within.

For example, most of the world finds cats to be cute and rats to be hideous. Cats and rats are on opposite ends of the cuteness-edibility bell curve. As a result most of the world does not eat them, unless it needs them to fulfill a nutritional deficit. Whereas, many people find cows to be cute, but not as cute as dogs and cats. Thus, cows are edible. However, horses fall in line with dogs and cats on the cuteness scale and are thus generally inedible. But, move to a culture that uses horses as a work animal and not as a show animal and you find that horses are considered beasts of burden, which are inherently less cute than animals for play, and thus are edible.

As a result you end up with an interest difference across the world when it comes to dogs. If you look at American culture, dogs are highly cute and inedible, whereas in Middle Eastern culture dogs are often seen as disgusting animals and those ugly and inedible, but in China many people tend to be historically indifferent and thus they are edible.

However, the problem with this scale is when you reach seafood. Seafood is often delivered to plate unseen of its original form, thus people eat it merrily. However, show someone a monkfish before they eat it or a clownfish before offering it to them to be consumed, they will be less likely to chow down.

Thus, at the end of the day, I believe cuteness is the controlling factor here. Now, what does that say about us as meat eating inhabitants of this planet?

We share 75% of our DNA with Dogs, and Harris's ancestors will also have eaten them. His being a vegetarian does disservice to his omnivore heritage and cannot be healthy. Here's in China, dog is regarded as a heating food and is popular in North China in winter. Here's a recipe to make Dan a meat-eater again:
Finds a dog. Batter it to death with a large heavy stick (the fear & pain improves the flavor)
Skin it and joint it
Set aside legs and part of the rib cage, cover in flour and lightly brown in butter, remove from pan
Prepare a braising juice: Qingdao dark beer, salt pepper, sliced ginseng root, 8 sliced mouse-shit peppers, & mushrooms
Place browned meat in with braising juice and bake for 3 hours at medium heat.
Serve with rice and quantities of Baijiu.

If we want to talk about the legality of eating dog meat, we should 1st ask the question, "is eating/selling dog meat illegal in US or other Western nations?"

The answer is simply NO, at least not in many Western nations.

Dog meat, as long as inspected for food safety, is legal for sale in Canada (per 2003 case), and in many states in US, and many European countries.

(I think Germany and possibly France have outlawed sale of dog meat).

http://everymeat.com/dog-meat/

"The consumption of inspected dog meat is legal in many countries including Canada and parts of the United States, where it is especially common in Hawaiian cuisine. For a truly authentic Hawaiian pizza, you can replace ham with dog meat."

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So at the end of the day, the debate needs to go no further than the doorstep of the Western nations. The same argument has not effectively banned dog meat in the Western nations, one can hardly expect the argument to carry the day in China.

I guess the real solution is to not eat meat.

There are "human friends" that are also considered food animals in Western culture. European import huge quantity of horse meat from US, and in America rabbit is considered both pet and food. Let's not even get into the fact cows are gods to a significant % of human population.

As to cruelty, I would opin that

While I appreciate that this is a complicated issue, especially in terms of why some animals are considered "food" and others aren't, what hasn't been addressed here is that many of the dogs in question were stolen pets. The same thing with many of the cats that end up in cook-pots. This is more than a clash of values; this is about pets being kidnapped and eaten.

So, we can argue about the larger issues here, but on just about any level you'd care to consider it, I think we can agree that kidnapping peoples' companion animals, or if you'd prefer, stealing their property, is wrong.

My two cents' worth.

Humans began eating meat thousands of years ago in the millenia before they learned to cultivate crops. The early hunting- and gathering-homo sapiens didn't have the knowledge of how to farm, much less produce surplus crops. They were nomadic and ate those fruits, grains, and wild game that they could catch and consume. Without a body of knowledge that we today would term "science", they acted on their most natural and basic impulses to survive and succeed as a species. It speaks volumes that the first known tools made by man were those used for hunting and cleaning animals killed in the hunt. It's also significant that settled farming and animal domestication for consumption purposes appear to have occurred almost simultaneously in man's prehistorical period. Hence, it seems clear to me that homo sapiens were (and are) driven by something natural and deep within them to eat meat, much the same as lions, or tigers, or bears. Because this drive is natural, it's somewhat difficult to condemn it on moral terms ipso facto. We need a factual context and set of normative standards to condemn any human activity, the eating of animals included.

Despite our pride-driven wishes to consider ourselves different from our distant ancestors, modern homo sapiens are NO DIFFERENT biologically than their ancestors who lived 20,000 years or more ago; we differ from them only as to how we perceive the world in moral, philosophical, intellectual and scientific terms. In developed/rich world countries we have longer life spans and often are taller on average than our distant ancestors, but fundamentally we are the same species driven by the same biological impulses and imperatives. We therefore eat, mate, produce and raise offspring and spend all of our lives in activity to support these basic biological needs. Meat eating being a product of some innate and natural drive in homo sapiens, condemning another culture's or person's choice of what meat they eat on moral terms is a waste of time (cannibalism excepted and maybe even that stance may be no more than the product of religious and/or cultural arrogance). Perhaps when it all comes down to it, it's only the luxury of having choices in what foods we can eat that drives the decision on the morality of eating certain animals as opposed to others.

I have a question. I found this blog today and my question is this. If both Indians and Chinese are very poor, then why is it the Chinese who have such, well, strange food choices. Why don't Indians eat the animals or scorpions or ants, or whatever?

Why this 'hitler was a vegetarian' shit all the time? how do you even know it's true? i am a vegetarian just as is the author and i wonder how he would feel if the chinese wanted to eat him? probably not quite so altruistic. eating dogs is asia's greatest remaining cultural evil, but they [or you!] won't ever find out unless you get close enough to a dog to find out. if you aren't human enough to manage that, go eat everything that moves.

Wow Ms. high and mighty Mary Anne Britnell. So your dad chooses to paint all chinese restaurant owners with a board stroke. Good for him. He is great at stereotyping just like you. Did thoses restaurant owners serve dog meat? Most people in china do not condone eating dog meat. So they ignore the laws of your country and illegally serve dog meat? What country do you live in? I've never seen a chinese restaurant in a western country serve dog meat. There would be significant backlash and bad publicity. Not to mention that the joint would probably be vandalized by PETA.