Where do we put the line of what is a companion animal and what is meat? Why? With the recent controversy of Whole Foods now selling rabbit meat, this article examines the frustrating, fuzzy reasoning of the seemingly arbitrary boundaries we construct between whom we love and whom we eat. To the authors credit, the conclusion seems to be we love some and eat others because, well, because we are irrational. In America, it’s socially okay to fall in love with your golden retriever and let it sleep at the foot of your bed, but the same can’t really be said for a chicken. Peoples relationships with other creatures exist on a spectrum, or perhaps more accurately, within a series of concentric circles. The closer something is to the center, the more we consider it family; the farther out it is, the less it resembles kin. We don’t eat animals emotionally close to us, but the less we identify or have a relationship with them, the more edible they become. Eating your dog is repulsive because it seems like cannibalism. Yet for at least 95 percent of Americans, eating a hamburger doesn’t elicit the same response.
Posted on: Wed, 20 Aug 2014 14:16:18 +0000
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