I don't really care what people eat. Let me rephrase that, I don't think it's right to criticize another person or another culture's attitudes about nutrition, agriculture, and health. Without a doubt, the U.S. has the least healthy, most destructive, most repulsive and unsustainable food system on the planet. We are destroying the world for convenience, for sweets, for caffeine, for hamburgers.
We in the USA also have a great many white vegan know-nothings who hold self-righteous attitudes about ethical consumption but have absolutely no concern for the migrant labor who make their organic kale possible. People who buy organic lettuce mix and don't know that the plastic container it came in cannot be recycled by an average local recycling plant. People who constantly harass the choices of the poor, the choices of people of color, the choices of anyone not like them because they don't approve of it.
But I'll get back to dog meat.
You have to really come to terms with the cashing in on the term organic. Think about what organic (which is often ambiguous across borders and from one food to another, and not an end in itself) means in a capitalist mega-lucrative agribusiness context. Here organic means nothing, ethically. Sure, the planet may be a tiny bit better off. But local living and not eating meat and buying organic are not going to save us. I am a pessimist.
I also love animals and I always have. I have dabbled in vegeterianisn for almost ten years. Before coming to Korea I was a somewhat strict vegetarian, but now I eat meat. I wish I didn't but I do, sometimes. It's just easier to take what I am offered at the school lunch. The amount of meat Koreans consume can be astonishing. It is often combined with a lot of vegetables so it's not like Americans with their Steak and Fries.
When it comes to dog meat I have no interest to try, but I also have no revulsion to the idea. Meat is meat. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs, perhaps smarter. The longest walk that a pig takes in its entire life is to be slaughtered. There are more chickens than human beings. The energy it takes to feed and provide for a cow could probably power an entire village in a subaltern economy, probably. I only made up that last one.
Do Koreans eat dog?
Yes. And No. I have asked quite a few people. Most expressed indifference (the pretty widespread indifference to political issues is perpetually puzzling to me, but I don't have a right to know as an outsider). Some expressed a love for dog meat, some were disgusted. It seems to be a more rural, older generational thing. I read another white guy who blogs on TEFL in Korea, whose opinions I don't agree with, saying that the eating of dog will go away as the older generation starts to leave us. I have no idea where he was getting that concept and my evidence points to the opposite conclusion. It probably will never go away.
[[ TANGENT, RANT WARNING There is a vast amount of misinformation on Asian culture. It's part of what helped the West dominate the East for so long. Asian countries are admirable for how much they don't give a fuck about Westerners. The opinions of Westerners. See, it's a racial issue because white culture likes to perceive itself as on top, as relevant, as the moral barometer for the world AND IT'S JUST NOT. People can pursue their cultural traditions in any way they want.
For example, Islam does not oppress women. If you want to claim it does, then you have to start with speaking to Muslim women. That should be step 101, asking women about their own experiences. Instead, white feminists come into the picture with the idea that they are correct and right. White feminists oppress women in the Islamic community by telling Muslim women how not to dress, not hearing the common idea that their devotion is usually the main reason for their clothing, it's not necessarily an expression of injustice.
Cultural criticism is only right to do about, within, in regard to your own cultural community. Sorry, colorblind white dudes. I know you love to pretend you dole out equal criticism across cultures BUT YA DON'T. Every culture has good and bad DUH, the point is to criticize your own culture to make it better. Anything else is brazen nay-saying- external, elitist, removed from context, and very often- racist hating.]]
Back to animal meat.
This is the real thing that hurts me, though. After centuries of domestication, it seems like we've been getting closer and closer to animals. Remember the "swine flu" hysteria? Guess what, that's just regular flu. Flu comes from swine. We've been domesticating them by selectively breeding out the aggressive ones and rewarding the docile ones. So the pigs, goats, sheep, cows, cats and horses we find today are basically our pals. They have a deep, ancestral connection to us and know how mutually benefiting works. If only in a trans-species sense.
Fish can work together. Crows can pass on information to their friends. Monkeys make war. Mites live in your eyelashes.
Really, dogs are like the best thing on earth. I just fucking love dogs and that's why I don't want to eat them. Cows can be loving too. So can pigs. Pigs are adorable. The sad part is that we've gotten so close to them all with the intent to one day kill cook and eat them.
So when it comes to dog meat, the line between food and pet is entirely arbitrary. It just makes me sad that all of these creatures are trapped, and we're trapped, in a sense too. Our outmoded thinking is perfectly illustrated by the massive toxic ponds of cow and pig feces and urine. These ponds are basically unregulated and flood our watersheds. And they are all over the Midwest.
We can't pretend the revolution, the menu, and the environment are distinct issues. We have to liberate farm workers, democratize food access across every community, raise the minimum wage for service workers, stop shaming thin/fat people, get rid of food deserts, stop buying single use plastics because they are destroying the ocean, stop wasting huge amounts of food because it's not good looking. These are interrelated.
Buying local is not enough, but it can't hurt to buy local. baby steps, baby.
Let us also think about food in a way that is both culturally sensitive and radically humanitarian.
