First Catch your Elephant (or Dog)

On June 7, 1958, the menu at the annual reunion lunch for members of the Société nationale d'acclimatation de France included African elephant trunk (Dunbar, 1977, p. 949). On my first visit to Chiangrai in 1990, my younger brother and I followed the proprietor's suggestion that the duck at a small local restaurant was especially good, but we were very surprised when it arrived  because it did not look or taste like any other duck we had ever had; further questioning revealed that we had misunderstood - the shop owner had not been recommending duck, but had been saying "dog". On my more recent visit to stay in the village home of a friend from Chiangrai a few years ago, his thoughtful mother insisted on going to the trouble and expense of preparing dog for dinner one evening. I wasn't particularly thrilled, but neither did I want to be an ungracious guest. That interesting snippet from one of my favourite food books and the memories of my experiences with the culinary traditions of Chiangrai province came to mind when I read two reports on the BBC this afternoon: "Chinese dogs rescued from dinner table" and "Dozens of elephant tusks seized at Nairobi airport".

In "Chinese dogs rescued from dinner table", Michael Bristow reports on the recent rescue of almost 500 dogs by a Chinese animal rights group. He says that this is a new development in China, where eating dog meat is traditionally seen as desirable for health, especially in winter. Bristow points out that many, especailly the well-off, Chinese now see dogs as pets to be cared for rather than food to be eaten, even if grown especially for that purpose (2011; Dunlop, 2011). Bristow also notes that police who attended the stand-off between the animal rights activists and the truck driver that they stopped could to nothing since there is no law against eating dog meat in China. In the end, the activists paid the driver USD $18,000 for his cargo of dogs, which they then took to animal shelters for treatment.

There is no eating of elephants reported in "Dozens of elephant tusks seized at Nairobi airport", where the writer tells us that sniffer dogs helped police find more than one tonne of ivory from slaughtered elephants. The ivory was likely on its way to countries in Asia.

You've probably already guessed that my interest in these articles was their relevance to Stephen Law's arguments. If we think it is OK to eat pigs and cows, why do some people think it so wrong to eat dogs or elephants that they want such things legally banned? Law, of course, asks a much more serious question, but a gentler approach to speciesism and the challenge it poses to those who think it is OK to eat meat is why it could be OK to greedily gobble some meats but not others. If it's OK to eat turkey, isn't it also OK to eat monkey's brains, dog's ears, and elephant trunks, especially if the monkeys, dogs and elephants were all bred and grown for that purpose so that there was no danger of extinction or harm to the species?
Law, as you now know, doesn't just ask what possible reason we could have for discriminating against different non-human animals, but what possible reason we could have for treating any animal, including human beings, differently when it comes to dinner time.

Many people, for example, object strongly to the Japanese hunting and eating whales, but why is that any worse than killing and eating pigs? (The number of whales the Japanese kill is strictly controlled and is not a threat to the species.) At the moment, Japan is forced to pretend to kill whales for research purposes, but wouldn't it be better to be honest and just allow them to kill them for food if that is what they want to do? If not, what makes whales different to tuna or salmon when it comes to killing them for food? (Unlike dog, I've never tried whale, but I prefer salmon to tuna.) Is there any reason not to kill and eat any animal that is not in danger of extinction?

__________

References

Bristow, M. (2011, May 6). Chinese dogs rescued from dinner table.  BBC News. Retrieved May 7, 2011 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13268235

Dozens of elephant tusks seized at Nairobi airport. (2011, May 6). BBC News. Retrieved May 7, 2011 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-13314780 

Dunbar, J. (ed.). (1977). New Larousse Gastronomique. London: Hamlyn. 

Dunlop, F. (2011, may 6). Dog meat in China (sidebar). BBC News. Retrieved May 7, 2011 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13268235