Dog

Eating Animals-Why Not Just Eat the Family Dog?

Opinion by Consumer Freedom
(November 03, 2009) in Society / Animal Rights

If you follow the animal-rights movement, you might have caught wind of novelist Jonathan Safran Foer’s first attempt at polemic in his new book, Eating Animals. In the tradition of Michael Pollan and Food Inc., Foer is trying to whip celebrity activists into an anti-meat frenzy. In a Wall Street Journal essay this weekend, he got one thing right: Our food choices are more a function of cultural identity than the culmination of a tortured logic exercise. Which is why omnivorous Americans universally reject his suggestion that we should just eat the family dog.

He writes:

What might be the reasons to exclude canine from the menu? The selective carnivore suggests:

Don't eat companion animals. But dogs aren't kept as companions in all of the places they are eaten. And what about our petless neighbors? Would we have any right to object if they had dog for dinner?

OK, then: Don't eat animals with significant mental capacities. If by "significant mental capacities" we mean what a dog has, then good for the dog. But such a definition would also include the pig, cow and chicken. And it would exclude severely impaired humans.

So what if there’s an argument to be made for eating Fido? If dinnertime were always logical, no one would ever lick an ice cream cone (too fattening!), or munch on potato chips (too salty!), or even drink coffee (all that caffeine!).

Foer, like other animal rights activists, is ignoring basic reality. Humans have thoughtfully domesticated different animals for different purposes. Oxen are great beasts of burden. Cats make fantastic pets. Farmed fish and dairy cows are amazing protein machines. And let’s face it: If it weren’t for bacon, pigs would be extinct.

If you don’t believe dogs are edible, just ask a mountain lion or a coyote. (They have no such cultural taboos.) But despite what PETA (and Foer) may believe, dogs are pets because they make better companions than entrées. The reverse is true for cows, pigs, chicken, and fish. And no amount of rational rhetoric—however well written—will ever change that.

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Eating Animals-Why Not Just Eat the Family Dog?

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  • dancetoday
    good points

    AR activists try to use emotional appeals, not logic. The statement about eating the family dog is one of them. Any biologist can tell us that our tooth structure is one of omnivores, not vegetarians. Many of my friends are vegetarians, and I honor their choice. I wish animal rights activists would honor everyone's rights to eat what they wish. If they want to put their money where their mouth is, they should fund some wildlife sanctuaries or local animal shelters rather than trying to control everyone's lifestyle choices.

    - dancetodayUS November 4, 2009 11:16AM

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    • emikoala
      Teeth

      Actually, our teeth are not those of omnivores. Look at a bear's mouth: that is the tooth structure of an omnivore. Pointy teeth fill the entire mouth. Look at a horse's herbivore mouth - essentially identical to our own. Flat clippers in the front, pointed teeth in the front corners for shearing, and grinding teeth in the back.

      But we've clearly evolved the ability to tolerate eating meat , so I agree with you that I don't think bio-logic contributes anything to the debate.

      - emikoalaUS November 4, 2009 11:37AM

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      • dancetoday
        horses are omnivores??

        Are you saying that horses eat meat ? Here is a good explanation of the difference in herbivores, omnivores, and carnivores:

        Humans are omnivores and herbivores are derived from omnivores.

        There's two things you have to look at: the mouth and the gut. And to do this you have to go back to where the placental mammal group (Eutheria) diversified into seperate lineages or species. The first to directly break off from this lineage were insectivores (anteaters and armadillos). Carnivores are another seperate lineage that led to dogs, cats, bears, raccoons, etc. Then came omnivores that still had canine teeth to strike at, attack, and kill their prey.

        Most herbivores today have no canines because they have no need to subdue their food , but instead have an extensive array of thickly enamel-covered molars and premolars and jaws that move sideways to grind up their food, rather than to just crush the food into a small pulp like omnivores do (mastication). In cows, horses and deer, the dentine (teeth) structure is "lophed," meaning that they have ridges in them for grinding. Human teeth are not as lophed as cows, horses, and deer. We also do not have the extensive masseter muscles as they do that allow the back rows of the teeth and the back of the jaw to move sideways with such extensive grinding force.

        The second major difference between omnivores and herbivorous is the gut (stomach and intestines). We no longer have a cecum - a seperate stomach chamber - that allows fermentation to break down and digest cellulose (plant fiber). The remnant of a large cecum (or plural ceca) in humans is now our small thin appendix. Humans are unable to digest cellulose like cows, deer, horse, elk, sheep, and rabbits. Even a monkey has a much larger and longer cecum than what is now leftover as our appendix.

        In general, all herbivores have a much larger stomach, larger cecum, and a much larger and longer intestine than omnivores. Ruminants (cattle, sheep, goats, deer, and giraffes) have an extremely large four chambered stomach that they use to digest the cellulose with special microorganisms and enzymes (cellulase) that humans and carnivores do not have.

        Carnivores have an extremely short intestine because the food that they eat - meat - has already been digested by the original herbivore that they ate. Carnivores include amphibians, snakes, crocodilia, hawks, and carnivora - dogs, cats, bears, raccoons). Even though the former do not have canines (because their prey is so small that they not need canines to seize and hold their prey in the same way as carnivora need to do), they all have shorter and unspecialized intestines, and lack the enzymes needed to digest cellulose. However, it is thought that a small amount of cellulose digesting enzymes are still produced by the human appendix. Thus we have gone through a transition. But humans are not carnivores because we do not have canines; and our intestines are in general, longer than carnivores, yet much shorter than herbivores.
        Carnivores only eat meat: herbivores only eat plants. We are neither.

        We are omnivores because we eat both, and because of the structure of our teeth (incisors, premolars, molars, and lack of canines), the way that we masticate (chew food into small clumps called a bolus, before swallowing), the way our salivary glands lubicate the throat to allow us to swallow, our lack of any significant cecum to produce the enzyme cellulase to digest cellulose, and the mid-range size of our stomach and mid-range length of our intestines that allows us to digest some plant nutrients, but not to adequately digest raw meat, as carnivora can.

        - dancetodayUS November 4, 2009 11:48AM

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        • emikoala
          Where did I say horses eat meat?

          I said "Look at a horse's herbivore mouth".

          But yes, I agree with your general assessment. We are biologically between herbivore and carnivore, mostly due to evolved adaptations (but we began as herbivores and evolved a tolerance for meat , rather than beginning as carnivores and evolving a tolerance for plants).

          - emikoalaUS November 4, 2009 12:02PM

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          • dancetoday
            depends on when you are taking as the beginning

            I see what you are saying. I guess it depends on what you are taking as the beginning of humans, which should probably be a whole different discussion topic. :-)

            - dancetodayUS November 4, 2009 12:07PM

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          • dancetoday
            horses are omnivores??

            Sorry about that. I read that you were giving the horse as an example of an omnivore. I misread it. But you gave the bear as an example of an omnivore, with all pointy teeth. My understanding is that all pointy teeth is the tooth structure of a carnivore. Many people use carnivore interchangeable with omnivore and they are not the same.

            - dancetodayUS November 4, 2009 12:12PM

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