The Other Kind of Dogfood

It's recently been announced that Beijing gets to host the 2008 Olympics. Animal Rights activists in the United States and Western Europe have already begun petitioning the Chinese Olympic Planning Committee to ban the serving and consumption of dog meat during the Olympics. This is one of the most patently arrogant things I've heard in a long time. Why is western society so bent on enforcing their own cultural taboos and preferences on the rest of the world?

Here's a hint, sports fans and animal lovers: If you can't bear the idea of eating cute little puppies on a bed of rice covered with tangy sauces while you're watching the 100 Yard Dash, DON'T ORDER DOG!! And, in the meantime, shut the hell up. Just because dogs are common pets in some countries doesn't make them any less of an animal than anything else that gets chopped up, heated up, and slapped on plate. Don't push your arbitrary value system on other people, alright? In Japan, many people have pet chickens. In India, cows are a sacred animal. Here in America, we eat them both. In China, dog is a delicacy sold at higher costs than pig or chicken. Cope.

I live in America. I have never, to my knowledge, eaten dog meat. I've had pet dogs, cats, goats, gerbils, and fish. (Some fish become pets, others become sticks. Go figure.) If someone took away one of my pets and ate it I'd be outraged. If someone hurts my cat, for food or just for malice, I will hunt them down and skin them slowly. But that's because it's my pet. If I had a pet cow and watched it grow up and fed it and cared for it and took it for walks I'd be just as furious if someone sliced it into hamburgers. But that doesn't stop me from grilling at every opportunity I have.

Just stop trying to impose your own mores on other people, okay? If you say you love animals, take a look at some of the cultures who truly revered animals, such as the Native Americans who worshipped, respected, and paid homage to the very animals they hunted and ate. If you say you love nature, take a look at nature itself and choose to be a part of it instead of staying aloof, ruling it with your "protection."

One last thing, and if nothing else this is the one to really contemplate upon the relevence of, western society:

"This is my body, broken for you. Take and eat, in remembrance of me."