A lot of us will happily eat meat in copious quantities yet we haven't touched it in its raw form and balk at having to clean a chicken or a goat. The lack of this visceral experience may be why a lot of people are so sensitized towards animal slaughter. We are now so detached from the origins and supply chain of our food that we believe it miraculously ends up on our table, and no one has suffered as a result of our carnivorous urges. All of which makes the recent uproar over the Yulin dog meat festival – pardon the pun – hard to digest.
I'm not here to debate the ethics of the festival from either a gastronomic (don't like lychees or cooked dogs) or compassionate standpoint. There are a lot of people up in arms over the mistreatment of dogs and rightly so. This dog trade is illegal and largely unregulated, thus lending itself to dubious practices and hygiene violations. I do not condone animal abuse but when it comes to slaughtering practices and culinary habits, it seems a little rich for the rest of the world to tell these people what they can and cannot eat. Unless you're ignorant of modern institutional farming methods or a vegetarian, it's hypocrisy on a monumental scale.
We're in denial if we think that the meat we consume has come from an animal that has been fed honey dewed grass and feed, left free to roam in vast fields to contemplate their existence, given a weekly massage, and transported in an air conditioned vehicle playing soft jazz right before they are painlessly killed without any discomfort or prior knowledge. The unpalatable truth is that the meat that we eat is, in all probability, a result of despicable factory farming methods which run the gamut from gene modification and hormone injections (to produce more meat) to how they are raised, inhumanely transported, and slaughtered in an assembly line.And all of this is done on a massive scale. The very people who are so outraged at this festival are sadly part of this demand that contributes to pain and suffering on an industrial scale for these animals.
In Nepal too, we often see buffaloes and chicken transported in cramped vehicles to be slaughtered in suspect conditions. This is part of the reason why I'm hesitant to join the condemnatory bandwagon. We have too many skeletons – both literal and figurative – in our closets for me to be comfortable passing judgment on others. During Dashain, thousands of goats and livestock across the country are slaughtered, often inhumanely, to satiate our demands and more often than not, we have religiously convenient and justifiable reasons for it.
The Gadimai festival, where countless animals are transported and killed callously to appease certain gods, is another occasion that we should be ashamed of. There are other instances in various countries like the turkey cull during Thanksgiving in the US and various meat festivals all over the world that contribute to the mass suffering of countless varieties of animals.
So how is the suffering of dogs different from what we perpetrate at other times or in the case of industrial livestock farming, every day on a huge scale? This obviously doesn't make our stomach turn the same way it does for canine slaughter. It certainly goes beyond mere culinary disgust, and the cacophony of universal condemnation suggests a distinct tone of morality.
The argument goes that cats and dogs are our friends and aren't meant for the table. Our domestication of these animals means that we have endowed 'humanness' upon them to such an extent that it seems implausible that someone would eat them. At the same time, we have been conditioned to 'dehumanize' chicken, sheep, and other livestock so it becomes completely normal for us to eat them.
There was uproar amongst the British public recently when samples of beef in Tesco were found to contain horse meat, which left their horse loving neighbors across the channel slightly bemused by the entire episode. On the basis of an impassive observation the truth is that we eat sheep, chicken, and other livestock whilst they also eat dogs, cats and pretty much anything that moves.
A lot of our practices and preferences also stem from culture and religion. In some countries, cows have it easy due to 'bovine' intervention and pigs are spared because they are detested by Jews and Muslims alike. The globalization of culture and consciousness may eventually homogenize our culinary preferences and eliminate festivals like these but for now it has gone on despite the protests. If as they say 'you are what you eat', then the patrons of this particular festival may not be too flattered by this description.
gunjan.u@gmail.com
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