Dog meat isn’t special, whether you eat it or not ...

Saturday, April 28, 2012

Dog meat isn’t special, whether you eat it or not

Recently, much has been made of a passage in Barack Obama’s 1995 memoir Dreams from My Father where he speaks of eating dog meat as a child in Indonesia. He described it as “tough”, though not as tough as snake meat. Others have claimed that Obama has never apologized since then or expressed any regret over having eaten dog. But regardless of the veracity of these claims, or the ethics of other dog-related acts such as transporting a live dog on the roof of a car, there’s little reason why this would be newsworthy. And even if Barack Obama were completely unapologetic about eating dog and continued to enjoy dog meat to this day with no compunctions whatsoever, this still should never have become an issue. Whatever your views on the morality of eating meat, there’s no reason why the ethical status of eating dog should be substantially different from that of eating cow, pig or chicken. The concerns that apply to the raising of dogs for meat are equally applicable to other livestock as well.

Video transcript: http://zinniajones.com/blog/2012/04/dog-meat-isnt-special-whether-you-eat-it-or-not/

Dog Wars Escalate: Barack Obama Ate Dog Meat
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/17/dog-wars-obama-dog_n_1433223.html

In Pig Cognition Studies, Reflections on Parallels With Humans
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/10angier.html

Dog meat legal, health inspector says
http://www.cbc.ca/news/story/2003/11/07/dog_meat031107.html

U.S. could feed 800 million people with grain that livestock eat, Cornell ecologist advises animal scientists
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/aug97/livestock.hrs.html

Rearing cattle produces more greenhouse gases than driving cars, UN report warns
http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsID=20772&CR1=warning

Nureongi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nureongi

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