Pets Or Meat
Having just got back from Iceland, where they eat foal, I’ve been thinking about the phenomenon of eating meat from animals one might, alternatively, keep as companions/workers. Examples:
- Peruvians and Ecuadorians eat guinea pigs, which they also keep as pets. Not very different from Americans or Brits eating rabbits, which they might also keep as pets, though less-frequently than the Andeans do guinea pigs.
- South Koreas eat dogs, which they also keep as pets. Not so different from folks who keep pigs as pets, but I don’t think that’s quite as common.
I’m sure there are other examples. This is a question for John Schwenkler more than anybody, but what do people think about this phenomenon. Creepy? Normal? Actually healthier than not? I’m thinking specifically about eating creatures that might very well be raised for purposes other than food in that same culture, purposes that would imply an emotional relationship with the animal – such as would form with a horse used for riding, a dog used for hunting, a rabbit kept as a child’s companion and plaything. How do the folks who are very much in favor of “knowing where your meat comes from” and that sort of thing feel about the pet/food phenomenon?
i thought that this phenomenon broke down within the society so that the same people often do not eat potential pets, or have pets of potential food. i knew of a woman raised on a farm in minnesota who had a distant relationship to cats specifically because they had so many feral cats on the farm (to control pests) who she saw torn up and die in machine equipment. in south korea dog eating in a custom of the old, and dog keeping was a fad of the young, from what i had heard….
(i recently saw a documentary on northern greenland on virgin air and the narrator noted that one reason greenlanders keep their dogs in grotesque conditions is that they view them as objects, and not companions, and they work hard to maintain the distance since dogs are of such utility that total extraction of their utility might be needed)
— razib · Jul 7, 11:12 PM · #
I’ve heard it said that the Amish are egregious abusers of work animals, presumably for similar reasons to the Greenlanders that Razib describes.
— Matt Frost · Jul 8, 12:06 AM · #
My high school girl friend’s family named the steers they raised and doted over them too. Called them by name as chunks of their flesh lay still sizzling on the plate.
A bit much for me.
I did apologize to the last fish I filetted, which was still alive as I parted his meat from his bones. He responded by biting me hard enough to leave a scar.
— Tony Comstock · Jul 8, 04:18 AM · #
Noah: No offense but I think you’re going the wrong way about this.
“Pets” are a modern concept once people began not to need to eat the animals they kept around them. The reason we didn’t eat dogs was not because they were “man’s best friend” but simply because their meat is stringy and tasteless. The cultures you’re referring to don’t “eat animals they keep as pets” ; they simply eat and keep animals, the way which was pretty much normal for most of human history.
For centuries people have had both close living quarters, a need to have animals around for food, and also an emotional attachment to animals.
This is why animal rights people drive me so bananas sometimes. The people who spend the most time around actual animals, ie farmers and such, really like their animals (let’s put aside megafarms here for a second) and treat them well, and yet have no problem with killing them for food because they realize that that’s why they’re kept and fed. Most people from the 19th century would be surprised/shocked at bizarre our anthropomorphic relation to animals.
In the South of France up until the 1950s, pigs were kept in the home, referred to in the third person as “Monsieur”, and generally treated pretty much as one would a pet, and yet the whole purpose of his existence (and fattening and good treatment) was the slaughter of the pig, which was treated as a joyous family occasion and an excuse to party.
— PEG · Jul 8, 06:26 AM · #
The past, including of course the 19th century, does not have a terribly good record at moral classification. Anyway, why is attributing moral status to animals equal to attributing specifically human qualities to them? Stating “Quality <x> demands moral consideration” does not require <x> to be a human quality, and especially does not require <x> to be an exclusively human quality.
I hardly think farmers are evil monsters and imagine small farmers do quite like their animals, but having your livelihood dependent on treating animals as possessing a certain moral status does not exactly induce you to an honest accounting of whether said status is accurate.
Confusion over the primary purpose can probably lead to some maltreatment (such as Razib’s note of the greenlanders) as they try to put an animal in two different categories. It would also bring personal gain in as a corrupting factor. The practice is old however, and hardly the level of horror that is mass agriculture.
— strech · Jul 8, 03:02 PM · #
Cuy is not very good, which is probably why guinea pigs quickly assumed the role of pet instead of dinner.
— Angry Sam · Jul 8, 03:34 PM · #
The past, including of course the 19th century, does not have a terribly good record at moral classification.
I said that people in the 19th century would be surprised. What I did not say was that they would be right to be surprised.
I wasn’t making any moral judgments, just pointing out that something that Noah singles out is actually far more common than most people would think.
We can talk about the moral status of animals if you like (or not), but I wasn’t trying to make a point about that.
— PEG · Jul 8, 07:48 PM · #
I think most people don’t personalize— at least as “family”— animals to be eaten.
Cynologist Vladimir Beregovoy writes, in his book on primitive dog breeds, that the breed of dog most eaten in Korea and northern China has much less social “affect” and human- animal interaction than pet or working breeds, and is usually raised in groups and killed early.
Dogs in particular have a long evolutionary history of bonding with us that maybe unique in domestication— working on a book on it!
FWIW I breed dogs, hunt, and raise food animals (birds) and live among rancher and herders and eat their animals
— Steve Bodio · Jul 8, 11:33 PM · #
I agree that the food-and-pet thing isn’t uncommon, but I don’t think excess anthropomorphism is the cause, given how ancient it is. I mean, it doesn’t stop people eating them – see your anecdote about the French. You can see the excesses noted in Caleb’s article as bigger than what’s been done in the past, but I don’t think the extremes are a significant part of the culture.
The distancing of people from the need to depend on animals for food/clothing/whatever is a bigger factor. (And exacerbates the extremes of pet keeping).
— strech · Jul 9, 02:21 AM · #
Fine moral balancing: “you don’t eat a pig like this all at once”
— tom · Jul 9, 05:04 PM · #