Dog Food

This article describes what can happen if your dietary ideas differ from that of elements of your community.

 The action took place in South Korea, perhaps the most Americanized locale anywhere in Asia, so it isn't unusual for US ideas to have found a home there. 

Americans, who ridicule the veneration for cows of the Hindus of India, hold a perhaps greater esteem for canines. After all, dogs are actually considered to be the legal equivalent of some humans, namely policemen. Hindu cows don't become agents of law enforcement.

At any rate, what does this mean, if anything? Should a culture be able to employ the legal system to determine the dietary habits of its members? If Sharia law becomes the norm somewhere in the West will pork in the form of bacon, ham, chops and sausage be forbidden? In the US the consumption of horse meat is already prohibited, perhaps because bygone military leaders of the northern-most section of the country are frequently portrayed in paintings and sculpture mounted on horses. Not long ago horse meat was routinely eaten, by the Harvard faculty as one example, and still is in many other parts of the world. 

One question might be, "Why should anyone care what others eat?" Do-gooders, always worried about the health of others and the economic externalities of crappy diets, can't be too worried about horse meat or even dog meat, neither of which have the long-term fatal effects found in ice cream and cotton candy. So it must be some ethical or even religious thing. It's just wrong to kill and eat an animal that can be trained to fetch sticks.

What about other animals? Lambs are cute and cuddly but don't seem to have an effective lobbying organization. Both domestic and wild ducks and geese aren't idolized, maybe because they poop on golf courses and occasionally hold up traffic.

This is not to say that an individual can't try to discourage others from engaging in eating habits he deplores. He's probably within his rights to forbid his children from eating live frogs or other amphibians. But is it right for him to use the governmental power to enforce his own food ideas?

This is actually the crux of the matter. If a kind of behavior is "good" or "better" or whatever, its proponents should be able to convince others of that fact and their behavior would change to voluntary acceptance. That's not how it works when government is involved. "You can't do it because we said so."