Man’s Best Stir-Fry

This year could be the year of the horse. Activists in Great Falls, Mont., are lobbying their state legislature to pass the American Horse Slaughter Prevention Act, which would ban the export of horses to countries that slaughter them for meat. Their reason? Apparently slaughter “really disrespects an animal that we consider to be a friend,” says activist Melissa Carlson. “Disrespect,” it seems, is a loose term in Montana.

Yet Montana is not the first state to consider dietary laws that discriminate on the basis of cross-species friendship. The sale of dog meat is already illegal in seven states and environmentalists in Hawaii are working hard to add another to the list. Legally, dogs are honored with the category of “companion animal,” presumably because they are considered cute, fluffy, and generally useful—if you happen to have lost a Frisbee.

The dog, of course, has a special place in the West, and particularly in the U.S. Dogs are the country’s most popular pet, and are well serviced by a growing industry: Good Americans can find thousands of Internet sites designed to help them feed, bathe, and clothe his mutt—and, for the really committed, dog psychologists and professional dog photographers. One Baltimore news site run by CBS even hosts a “Dog Daily” blog complete with “tips for empowering your relationship [with your dog]” (http://wjz.com/pets).

With the appearance of dog-friendly legislation, however, this cultural phenomenon has overstepped its place. Typically, dietary regulation is justified either for public health concerns or on account of the would-be-meal’s danger of extinction. As to the former, it is true that animals higher up the food chain are more hazardous to eat—since they tend to ingest and accumulate more chemicals—but dog meat is no more dangerous than shellfish and hardly merits its own special ban. And as for the latter, as any Parisian will tell you, the world’s dog population is hardly in danger.

This is just the problem. Bans on dog meat tell the public not that dog meat is unsafe, but that dog-eaters are—beyond being distasteful to the mainstream—so morally degrading to society as to be worthy of explicit legislation prohibiting their unsavory habits. Worse, such laws discriminate—in effect if not intent—against ethnic groups that traditionally eat dog meat—namely, some East and Southeast Asian cultures. Dog is considered a delicacy in many Asian countries; unfortunately for new immigrants to the Land of the Free, here any savage who disrespects a dog enough to eat one is not wanted. The message is clear: Your tastes aren’t to Uncle Sam’s liking—assimilate!

Oddly, food has a history of playing cultural battleground: World War Two heralded the replacement of sauerkraut with “liberty cabbage;” for a time, “liberty fries” took up the flag. But don’t let it stop there. Not only have the French wickedly subverted the good ol’ fry, they also guzzle garlic, swallow snails, whiff wine and, worst of all, disrespectfully wolf down our friend Lassy!

Instead of pandering, legislators should have the courage to wash their hands of this nonsense. Declaring one’s undying friendship for the horse might look sensitive and progressive to the equine lobby, but enshrining such love in law is at best, sentimental and, at worst, ethnocentric.



Juliet S. Samuel ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Wigglesworth Hall.