![]() ![]() I went to Vietnam earlier this year to report a story on the illegal trade in pangolin, which is a scale-covered mammal few people care about (except me and maybe this guy) in the way they care about dogs. Maybe the logic of that makes sense but the thought of eating dog still doesn’t sit well. But if you refuse to eat only the meat of ‘companion’ animals – chewing bacon, for example, while telling Koreans that they can’t stew Dalmatians – you’re saying that the morality of killing depends on habit or even whim.” Either way, you’re using a fixed standard. You can eat meat because you believe that it isn’t. You can abstain from meat because you believe that the mental capacity of animals is too close to that of humans. If you raise it for food, it’s food,” he says in a 2002 essay, hilariously titled “Wok the Dog.” “This relativism is more dangerous than the absolutism of vegetarians or even of thoughtful carnivores. Plus, there’s an inherent danger in thinking that “the value of an animal depends on how you treat it,” writes Slate’s William Saletan. But eating those strays, those runaways, those not-quite-cute-enough-to-take and not-quite-well-behaved-enough-to-keep dogs would be killing a flock of birds with one stone and eating it, too.”īut wait: Dogs are companions, right? Pigs (mostly) are not.ĭog meat festival in China sparks outrageĪnd eating pig is off limits for many Muslim and Jewish people. It would be demented to yank pets from homes. The simple disposal of these euthanized dogs is an enormous ecological and economic problem. “nlike all farmed meat, which requires the creation and maintenance of animals, dogs are practically begging to be eaten,” Jonathan Safran Foer, a vegetarian and novelist, writes in the book “Eating Animals.” Euthanizing pets, he says, “amounts to millions of pounds of meat now being thrown away every year. The United States euthanizes 1.2 million dogs per year, according to the ASPCA. ![]() Here in the United States, a place with an unhealthy and ridiculously hipster bacon obsession (witness: bacon donuts, bacon pie, bacon in bloody marys), eating dog could be seen as a reasonable alternative to pig, which is another highly intelligent animal, capable of being a companion to the likes of George Clooney. Unless you’re vegetarian or vegan – I’m not, by the way, although I do try to eat relatively little meat – you don’t have any moral high ground to stand on. The fact that people are eating dog meat? That shouldn’t. Which is this: The cruelty of this trade – the fact that dogs are smashed into cages suffocated “ skinned alive, strung up and beaten,” according to a CNN report – is what should shock and sadden you. You won’t think about the bigger picture. You’ll do what I did, which is to imagine your dog, or your childhood dog, in one of these cages. I fear you’ll see Duggleby’s photos and think only one thing: How awful that people in Vietnam would eat these loveable, intelligent animals. In a slaughterhouse, “the dogs were beaten to death in front of me,” he said. And once in Vietnam no part of it is illegal.” ![]() But once they get to Laos they are legally allowed to travel … on the way to Vietnam, as the officials aren’t interested in it. The dogs aren’t vaccinated nor do they undergo quarantine. “The dogs are illegally smuggled out of Thailand – that is the illegal part,” he said. ![]() He told me in an e-mail interview that he considers himself a “dog person” – “I got an English sheepdog for my fourth birthday and called him Tom” – and that made it difficult to see the gruesome realities of this trade, which is illegal in Thailand because the exporters aren’t paying taxes or getting the dogs vaccinated. and has been living in Thailand for eight years. He documents a trade that is estimated to include hundreds of thousands of dogs per year. Shot by Luke Duggleby, who traveled to Thailand, Laos and Vietnam for the story, they’re well worth your attention. The images featured on the CNN Photo Blog take viewers inside Southeast Asia’s illegal dog-meat trade. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |