Why I don't eat dog

BY NICK BARNETT

In New Zealand, it's legal to kill your family dog, barbecue it, and eat it. So long as you stun or belt the animal hard enough for it to be deemed a "humane" killing. This according to the news.

In case you didn't hear about it, or don't want to follow that link (it does probably give you more detail on the events than a lot of people would feel comfortable with), here's the story.

A Mr Taufa of Mangere adopted his cousin's pitbull-cross because it was "too skinny". But Mr Taufa's wife found the dog noisy and messy, so hubby killed the dog and proceeded to start barbecuing it.

"Dog is good food," Mr Taufa insisted, surprised that the SPCA took an interest in his family's dinner plans. He used to cook dogs back in Tonga without hassle.

The dog-roasting Mr Taufa won't be charged with anything. So long as you kill it quickly and painlessly, the law lets you eat your dog. (Much to the SPCA's frustration.)

We raise and kill sheep, don't we? We slaughter and eat cattle, right? So why would dogs be any different?

I guess that's the issue that the law doesn't want to get into. It doesn't want to rank some animals as okay for eating and others as forbidden to eat. Because if you started on that course, where might you end up? You might end up with that most troubling of things: a conclusion that you didn't want in the first place, and one that creates a sticky set of choices for you if you're going to follow it through.

Do we humans have total dominion over animals, and therefore the right to kill and eat any of them (assuming they're not endangered)? If so, we have no reason to be outraged at Mr Taufa's gruesome actions.

Or do we actually have no inbuilt right to raise, kill and devour animals, because their right to life trumps our right to eat what we want? If so, there's no moral foundation for farming or eating any animal flesh, which leads to...huge and scary complication.

Or is there a place we can justifiably draw a line between those two extremes, letting us save the lives of certain species for good reasons while continuing to eat certain others? Perhaps a stance that acknowledges history and necessity but also works towards a future where animals will be better understood and treated?

These are weighty issues to balance on the spindly legs of this blog. But most of us, I suspect, would have a very strong reaction to what Mr Taufa did (and he's not the only one: stories like his one crop up every so often and throw attention on the same problems). I certainly had a strong reaction, and I've been trying to figure out why.

I eat meat. Lamb is my favourite. Last night's dinner was lamb shanks, and delicious it was. But would I have eaten it if it had been dog shanks? Or rump of cat? No. My instinct is to be disgusted at the thought.

How can I make sense of this instinct? Well I don't know what the SPCA's official philosophical line is on this, or yours, but here's what I think what's true for me.

Cats and dogs are species that we largely created, for our own purposes. Sometimes to do work for us, but nowadays mostly for companionship. They're the animals we let closest to us, and the ones we form the most tender relationships with. We've bred them for thousands of years so it's easier to love them, and so they'll fit our lives better. We've taken away a lot of their wildness, made them biddable, safer, soft, smart, attractive, sociable. They share our homes.

They're there to please us, and to be lovable, because we want to love them.

To me, this creates an obligation for us humans to treat companion species differently from livestock or "wild" animals. To create species to love us and then to use them for eating seems a hard-hearted betrayal, and encourages a cynicism about the rights of animals.

All those values are buried in my culture, and my culture imparted them to me.

This is why, for me, eating a dog is unthinkable.

Now, I assure you I can see light winking through some holes in this explanation. Rather than spend thousands of words trying to stitch up the holes - which you might be able to do better than I can - I'll list some troubling questions:

What about horses?

What about pigs, which are reputedly as smart as dogs?

How can you possibly know where to draw lines - science keeps shifting the goalposts; cultures differ and are always changing.

Is it fair enough to make a law that forbids the Mr Taufas of the world from following the familiar culinary habits of his culture? Aren't animal rights universal?

 Dogs look out from cages on a truck near Beijing. Dog meat is a specialty in Chinese cuisine.

Picture: Reuters

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