As good as duck and abortion

Summary 

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According to "Shenzhen becomes first Chinese city to ban eating cats and dogs" (2020), following an earlier ban on eating wild animals, which some believe to have been the source of the coronavirus that has infected more than 80 thousand people in China, animal rights groups have praised the recent decision by Shenzhen city to criminalize eating dog and cat meat, although the groups would have preferred that China had also banned the use of bear bile for coronavirus treatment. In supporting the change to the law, Shenzhen's government argued that evolving social beliefs that perceive pets as having closer social bonds to humans means that the millions of dogs and cats normally eaten every year in China should now be treated as they generally are in developed nations, which do not allow them to be eaten.

(version 4 = 137 words — safely within the 140 word limit.)

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Response 

family and pets at my brother's home
a couple of years ago

Although my family has always had dogs, both as work animals and as pets, I think China has made a mistake in banning a traditional practice for the reason given. I have no desire to eat dog, although I have tried it a couple of times when travelling in the north of Thailand. The first time was entirely accidental. My brother and I were in a small town in Chiangrai, and when we went to to a restaurant for a meal, the duck was recommended. We raised ducks at our home in Australia, and often eat it; when the dish we had ordered arrived, it was very clearly not duck. Further investigation clarified that we were eating dog: the consequence of  a pronunciation problem when I did not speak Thai. We continued with our meal, but certainly would not have ordered it had we understood what was being offered. More recently, one of my Thai friend's mother insists on cooking up a special meal of dog meat when I visit his home in Chiangrai. I wish she wouldn't, but I politely eat a little.  I would much prefer duck. 

So cute — ducklings at
my family's home
in Australia

I think China has made a common, and popular, mistake in arguing that if something is socially accepted, that makes it ethical. It is true that it is accepted as ethical, but I think an important ethical principle is that not only people but also entire societies can be and often are wrong about what is and is not ethical. It would be very easy if right and wrong could be determined by a simple majority vote, but that seems definitely wrong to me. Until about 150 years ago, slavery was widely accepted by society everywhere. It had always been morally wrong, but people had not realised that. Similarly, until very recently, same-sex marriage was a serious criminal offence in most countries, and those laws were always unethical, even though popular and supported by most religions. If it were true that being a majority opinion of society made a practice or believe morally right, then every social reformer would be morally bad. For example, the people who campaigned to end slavery, the people who campaigned for same-sex marriage, the women who campaigned for equal rights for their sex, and so on, were all minorities, often hated minorities at the start, but I do not think that made them wrong. It was society that was unethical, not the minority groups. The minority opinion was the right one. Similarly, when society imprisons people for selling or using drugs like yaa baa, heroin and marijuana while the people who sell and use the far more harmful drug alcohol are free and rewarded with fortunes, then society is morally wrong, however large a majority approves the unjust laws. Radicals who protest to change are not unethical because they disagree with socially accepted traditions. 

So, what about the ethics of eating dog meat? Is that right or wrong? I want to make another general point about ethics: it has to be logically consistent. That is, we need reasons to treat things differently. As the example with alcohol and other drugs shows, there is no good reason that justifies the very different treatment legal treatment of the sale and use of yaa baa and the sale and use of alcohol. That inconsistency means the law is unjust: either people who like champagne and the executives of Singha Beer should be in prison, or yaa baa users and dealers should not be in prison. 

Delicious dinners
at my brother's home

In the case of dog and duck, I can think of no morally relevant reason to treat eating them differently. Some people keep ducks as pets. My family treated some of our ducks more as pets than others. I remember once that one of my sisters was very upset and refused to eat when a naughty brother told her that we were eating Limpy, a favourite of hers. I think my sister's emotional reaction was natural and understandable, but I don't think that emotional reaction was a reliable guide to moral right or wrong. And the Chinese argument is similar to the popular misunderstanding that ethics is nothing more than a personal or social emotional response to something, so when people in Germany hated Jews, they thought it was good to kill them, and when people in various countries hated communists or atheists, or other religions, they thought it was good to kill them. All awful arguments supporting bad ethics. 

Some of our family pets

But it goes further. In my opinion, what makes it wrong to kill is that  you kill a living being that is also a person. This is why society rightly judges murder to be wrong. But a duck is not a person, so it is ethical to kill and eat duck. Similarly, a dog is also not a person, so whatever emotional attachment we might have to dogs, and my family has always had strong attachments to our dogs, it is not normally unethical to kill them for food as is traditional in some cultures. But this argument has another logical consequence: the pigs we like to turn into tasty ham and bacon are as much persons as is a human foetus in the mother's womb. Neither pigs nor unborn humans are self aware, neither pigs nor unborn humans have preferences or goals, or any other characteristic of a person than a duck or a cow. Logically, therefore, abortion cannot be unethical, which means that laws against abortion must be unjust. 
 

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Question

Do the arguments that allow us to enjoy eating duck, pork and beef also logically mean that it should be legal to eat dog meat and that abortion must be legal at any stage in a pregnancy? 

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Reference

• Shenzhen becomes first Chinese city to ban eating cats and dogs. (2020, April 2). BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52131940