From a LBN thread re frozen dogs (I think this is political in broad sense

[karlschneider]

)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=204448

So I have a bit of an issue here. Let me begin by saying I have lived with domestic animals, mostly dogs and some cats for the last 55 years.

There is obviously a serious taboo against eating dogs (in the USA) and
I share that feeling, but I am wondering how and why it became so.

Of course they are "pets" (whatever that devolves to) and the thought of eating Fido is on some level repulsive, but I've lived around "4-H"
members who raise cows, pigs, sheep, etc., given them names and then sell them at the county fair to be slaughtered.

There was a report on KOTV (Tulsa) this morning telling how the incinerator normally used to dispose of the approximately 300 dogs, cats and other unclaimed and unwanted animals EACH DAY broke down last year...so now they are killed, thrown into a truck and taken to the local landfill and thrown into the mix of unwanted stuff that ends up there.

There is a chance the McDonald's hamburger some of us might have eaten on any given day was a few ounces of a ground-up cow that could have had a name. I love a t-bone steak. Perhaps that makes me a monster, but if not, why draw the line at cows? Those 300 animals at the landfill could have been several thousand meals...but of course we don't eat dogs. We only eat cows, pigs, chickens, ducks, turkeys, sheep, goats, elk, most every kind of fish, quail, dove, horses, crabs, clams, oysters, lobsters......well, damn near anything that walks, crawls or (escargot) slithers...

So what, really is the rationale that we cannot chow on a chow?
Or have an actual "hot dog"?

I'm not trying to start a flamewar, I just really wonder.

[Maple]

1. Cultural differences?

Some people would be offended if you offered them corn on the cob...it's animal food in other places.

Some areas would have a fit about eating frog's legs..but they're a delicacy here.

I assume North Americans don't eat dogs because we regard them as more intelligent than sheep, cattle or chickens.

However, we're not consistent. Pigs are very intelligent...but we eat them.

None of it's rational...just cultural.

[mitchtv]

2. just culture , I agree,but we don't eat rat, either

for that matter , Mink,or mt. lion which abound.
I would like to add All felines and canines , equines to that taboo, please . No flame attempt about the addition of all equine species, just I love them too.

[Maple]

3. Well we eat

muskrat. We make coats out of mink and feed the meat to dogs...as we do with horsemeat.

I don't know why that is either.

[karlschneider]

4. I forgot frog legs which I find delectable too.

I'm not advocating barbecuing doggies, but I just find it more than a little odd that we draw the line where it seems to be drawn. I suspect I may have eaten some dog meat in my travels through the far East but I didn't know it for sure, and I did not ask. Another reply to my post mentioned ..I think, rodents, but of course humans regularly eat them (oh, it was a reference to rats)...squirrels are eminently edible too.

Don't call the SPCA, I'm not gonna chop up Smokey. :D

[jmowreader]

5. We don't eat "cute" animals in America

Spy Magazine once pulled one of their little pranks: They rented a food stand in a mall someplace and sold "Bunny Burgers." The concept was that America wanted a fat-free fast food burger, so "Bunny Burgers" was going to sell them just that: ground rabbit, formed into patties, broiled and served on a bun. It failed, as they expected, because it's terrible to eat bunnies because they're cute.

Yet if you went to Germany and set up a Bunny Burgers stand, you'd have to start selling franchises. People would like it there.

In America we don't eat dogs. (They used to--not sure if they still do--have a law in Seattle that said you had to be a resident of King County to bail a dog out of the pound, because crews from Oriental ships were buying dogs at the pound and eating them.) In Korea they have restaurants that only serve dog--you get to pick out the one you want, like we do with lobsters here.

Also in Korea, there was a meat shop that got busted for selling cats as rabbit. Not because it's illegal to sell cats for meat--in fact, it's reasonably popular--but because it was misrepresented. Now the law says you have to sell either of these animals with the back feet unskinned, because that's how you tell the difference.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Could it be part cultural, part commercial, part nutritional?

Eating wild or semi-wild carnivores (dogs, cats) or omnivores (rats) has the idea of eating something when you don't know what it's been eating - and rats are particularly associated with filth. I believe you also have to avoid certain bits (the liver?) of carnivores, because the have unhealthy concentrations of some vitamins.

If you farm the animals, so that you know they're healthy, it's expensive for carnivores (you're feeding something else, to then feed to them), and is there much meat on a rat? Is it worth the effort of farming them?

The pet aspect must come into it - the Normans introduced rabbits into Britain for meat and fur (some say it was the Romans), and it's still available at some butchers here, but quite a few people would never eat it because they had one as a pet. Similarly no Englishman would contemplate eating a guineapig, but South America is quite happy with that (they feed them kitchen scraps, so I guess there's not much expenditure in raising them; maybe if you kept rats in a secure box, and fed them scraps, it would be worth eating them after all).

For horses, it seems purely cultural - they're large herbivores, and not that dissimilar from cows in many ways. But the British recoil from the idea of eating them (we just fed them quietly to dogs instead), while the French are quite happy to serve them up at the table.