Eating dog is wrong. Right?
One of the very few things I knew about Korea before I came here for the first time on an art residency in 2008 is that they eat dog. This was one of the ‘exotic’ facts that served to set the Koreans apart from us westerners, and, of course, below us in terms of civilization. After all, what kind of civilized people eat dog, ‘man’s best friend’?
For westerners like me, a dog is a pet. But it is also commonly used as an ‘organic’ property alarm and deterrent. In Korea, the dog is also meat. But far fewer South Koreans than once upon a time consume dog nowadays.. 84% of the Korean population reported never having consumed dog meat nor having plans to ever do In a 2020 survey. (1) The dog as a pet is a growing trend here, imported from the west. The Covid-19 pandemic gave it a big boost because people were lonely, as also has the reluctance of young couples to have children - a dog becomes a substitute. Near us, a ‘dog café’ recently opened where city folks can bring their dogs for a safe run-around. Treacly pop music plays within the compound, so the visitors don’t get spooked by the silence, I suppose. None of them seem to consider that they could walk their dog on the delightful adjacent hill.
We have a pet dog named Bomi. It happened by chance. One day we were walking on the track beside this very same wooded hillside near the new dog cafe when we spotted a tiny black and white puppy hiding behind a tree. The picture at the start of today’s post is of Bomi just after we found her. Cute, or what?! As you can imagine, it was impossible to ignore the poor little thing. So, we took her home and adopted her. She’s now very much part of the family. We’re not sure what mix of breeds make her the mongrel she is. Perhaps border collie and corgi. She looks like a border collie except she has very short legs. Everybody smiles when they see her out for our daily walks. Here is a photo of Bomi more recently, visiting nearby fortifications:
On our walks we pass several guard-dogs, some of which bark very aggressively, some not so much. We also pass what I think is a ‘dog-farm’. The dogs are mostly Jindo, the most characteristic breed of Korean dog, and they never seem to get much past young adult stage before being replaced. It’s obviously very small-scale business, and I suppose you could call it a ‘humane’ kind of place, as it’s in the open air. Other dogs-for-meat are simply kept in cages. Here is this open-air one:
Before we luxuriate in our cultural superiority, however, it is worth considering the fact that meat consumption in general has risen in Korea because more Koreans are now Christians (29%). Buddhism, which was once the state religion of Korea and is still practiced by 23%, is a vegetarian religion.
Why stop our indignation with eating dog? What about all the other animals that are slaughtered for our culinary pleasure? The answer is obvious: because we think the dog is a domestic animal whose role is to be a pet or a guardian (or both), and so it is in a different category to all the other domesticated animals which are bred for consumption.
I was shocked by an essay I read recently in which the author discussed the modern-day broiler chicken – the kind we eat so voraciously that it has become by far the most numerous bird globally: it has a standing stock of about 23 billion! As the author notes, the sparrow population is about half a billion and the pigeon about 400 million. In fact, the broiler chicken outweighs all other birds in the world combined by more than twice. . This chicken, which has been bred to provide our dinner, is also a very different shape bird from its wild ancestor: it is three or four times bigger (2).
South Korea is also famous for its consumption of broiler chickens, mostly in the form of barbecued varieties. Restaurants are everywhere. Logically, ethically, we should surely also be contemplating stopping eating these chickens. Right? especially as they live their short lives in the most appalling conditions.
Back in the late 1970s before I went to university, I went to work for three months on a kibbutz in northern Israel (Israel were the ‘good guys’ back then and it was a late hippy kind of thing to do). This kibbutz had (probably still has) a broiler chicken farm, and as you can imagine, chicken was often on the menu. A couple of times, I was timetabled to work in the chicken shed. The job was carrying live chickens upside down by the legs so they could be stuffed into cages stacked on the back of a lorry, which would then transport them down the road to the slaughter-house. The huge shed in which the chickens were housed was horrible. The noise was deafening. The smell was noxious. The evident fear of the chickens, was palpable. After working the shift I stopped eating chicken…..for a couple of days.
My sister and niece are vegetarians. Meat is murder, that’s for sure. But it’s the kind of murder we are culturally conditioned to accept without moral qualms - or most of us, anyway. So, while we should definitely condemn dog-eaters, we might also make such criticism the occasion for some wider reflection on our own unexamined customs.
Notes
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat_consumption_in_South_Korea
2. Jan Zalasiewicz, “Science: Old and New Patterns of the Anthropocene’ in Julia Adeney Thomas, editor, Altered Earth. Getting the Anthropocene Right. Cambridge University Press, 2022) pp.38-40.