when we were in Australia, we were appaled that locals would eat kangaroo, as we preceived it as a cute family animal whilst we learned they are considered a "pest" and happily eaten
Learning for us on open mindness (and the kangaroo tasted good too)
But I could not willingly eat dog or cat, honestly cannot explain it rationally, but I draw the line @ dogs and cats
K
Imagine, Kermit in a saffron-sauce.
Or those cute piglets, which make delicious suckling pigs once grilled.
I think I can survive without having tried dog- or cat meat but they are not more or less "human" that the other animals we raise just to kill and eat them.
Pity my smoker is too small for a whole calf!
Tom
And, of course, we ate alligator in Florida this summer!
Tom
I won't put any info or videos on here, as it is just too shocking and sick- but intense suffering before the kill seems essential for tenderness
(it involves slow cooking alive, or heavy beating for some time before hanging alive to slowly suffocate).
BTW, there is horse, and horse, and you usually won't know. Both the old horses the local farmer had to be put down because of laminitis (deformation of the feet which causes painful lameness). They both ended up at our local horse butchers, and must have been quite tough.
advocating cruelty.
1. i applaud the good horse puns. there's nothing quite like a good pun. and given the subject matter of this thread, i will challenge any neigh sayer to refute my statement.
2. the moral relativity of one species to eat as ok the other as "barbaric" is very silly to me. it is the natural order of primates to eat meat, we are by nature omnivorous so its natural for us to eat other animals. It seems to me that as long as the nature of the animal is respected (not factory farmed) and the animal lives in some capacity as it is evolved to, whatever the animal is seems sort of irrelevant.
frankly, in this day and age with our current "post nationalism" western values, it seems like any meat consumption is technically unethical. But everyone does it, its delicious to many of us, is tradition, and so we do it and try not to think about it so much.
I would love to give up meat, indeed the mrs. and i rarely eat mammals of any kind except for cuts of bacon. Who can live without bacon? I cant but i wish i could. I'm sure those pigs which die in violence so i can make sunday brunch do too.
3. re: Appenzeller dog sausage, when i heard about that i thought to myself "wow appenzell must've been very poor for a very long time if that sort of thing became tradition."
And, I might add, to my time in China where they eat dog, cat, bugs, horses, and just about everything and anything edible, and call the west 'uncivilized barbarians' because of our shallow history, incomprehensible and short-lived cultures, terrible penmanship, inedible cuisine, huge noses, repulsive body odor and ridiculously large feet.
I personally agree with the humane line - if you eat meat, and said meat is humanely slaughtered, then what matter if some people keep those animals as pets? Not my place to judge their eating habits, especially since I'm such an avid consumer of the spoiled milk products that I'm told all truly civilized people eschew.
(I prefer raw, marinated in olive oil and Aquavit, overcooked tastes like overcooked liver)
Tom