Take the dog for a wok?

"The right to eat cats and dogs is under threat" in China, reports the Economist.
My question for the magazine: whatever happened to coming up with punny headlines?  Missed an opportunity for linking dog and "wok" :)

The proposed law would make the “illegal consumption or sale” of dog- or cat-meat punishable by a fine of up to 5,000 yuan ($730) or imprisonment for up to 15 days. But opponents are still many and vociferous both in the press and online. Dog-eating, they argue, is a time-honoured tradition and China is not yet ready for Western-style prissiness about consuming such animals. Perhaps, they suggest hopefully, the word “illegal” could be taken to mean that there might still be a legal way of killing cats and dogs for the table.

A couple of years ago, students in one of my classes asked me about the "holy cow" and, therefore, not much of a beef market in India.  I then engaged them in a discussion, and followed up with a comment that what we eat is culturally determined.

I then asked them how we might draw the line--what is it that prevented them from eating dogs?  The students seemed to be appalled that I would even ask such a question.

I  sensed that I had detected a chink in their armor, and went for the next step.  I asked them if they would be ok with having immigrant neighbors--immigrants from, say, South Korea, whose dog one day disappeared because, well, it became food.  If we banned eating dogs here, then couldn't we use that same law to ban eating chicken and beef as well?  Boy, I could see in their eyes that they wished they had never brought up the holy cow question :)

Let me refer you back to an old posting on eating dog meat ...

On eating dog meat ....

No, I have not done that.
No, I have no plans to do that.
But, hold on for the observations here ....

I grew up in a vegetarian setting, and tasted animal  carcass for the first time only a couple of years after reaching the US.  Even now, my animal intake is minimal--a little bit of chicken or beef.  No fish, lamb, well, whatever.  And there are lots and lots of days when I just a plain old vegetarian. 

When I go to India, I become even less of a meat eater.  Not only because that is the food habit at my parents' place, but also because I can see, and hear, the animals being taken to be slaughtered, or being slaughtered.  This last trip, when I was walking with my sister and her family we noticed two goats by the roadside.  A few minutes later, when we were heading back the same way, there was only one goat.  And, across the street they were cleaning up the goat that obviously had been killed in those few minutes in between.

I find it difficult to make peace with such killing.  When it is directly in front of my eyes, when it seems like the animals know what is ahead for them, I can't imagine eating them.

In the US, the sterile atmosphere of the grocery stores provides me all the denial I want.  The cleaned up chicken breast or cubed beef ready for a pot of stew is presented as if no animal was ever killed in the process.  It then is almost like picking up onions or sugar.  I can conveniently forget that I hold in my hand what was once a beautiful living, breathing animal.

So, where does the dog meat come in you ask?  To cut a long story short, here is Matt Steinglass (ht):

Living about a kilometer from a row of dog meat restaurants, I take Jonathan Safran Foer’s point that if we’re not going to eat dog, we probably shouldn’t eat anything else that has feelings. But I also believe that one’s arguments are formed in an implicit dialogue with one’s audience, and Foer is clearly speaking exclusively to a Euro-American and South Asian audience when he makes this point. There’s just no way this argument is gonna fly in East Asia or Africa. The philosophical underpinnings needed for the argument don’t exist here; they’re not present in people’s brains. I think we need to start out with the “humane practices” argument, first in the developed world — stop torturing pigs in our own slaughterhouses, etc. Then we can start making the case to East Asian farmers that you shouldn’t stuff 12 dogs into a wire cage, put it on the back of a motorbike and drive down to the market to sell them off, with the wires slamming into their paws and chests at every pothole; that you shouldn’t tie two ducks together by their feet and drape them over the handle of your motorbike, then drive along as they flap to try to keep their heads out of the spokes of the wheel; that you shouldn’t splay a pig upside-down, feet trussed, across the metal carrying rack of your motorbike; and so on. (In some places you may also need to make a similar case regarding treatment of humans. And the most effective grounds on which to make these arguments, in many places, may be religious.)