Always a funny one. People are entitled to their beliefs and by and large to each their own- assuming each keeps their own to themselves. When we start advocating ideas they are open to scrutiny- just as we are entitled to our opinions and feel a need to share them, so too may be for others.
We can ask the question of where one draws the line for food in general- there is obviously a ranking because I don’t see any plants up there as lives being taken by eating. Are plants sentient? Probably not by our definition- plants are very different than us, so then can we say that it’s ok to eat them or their lives are worth less because they are so different or alien to us?
There are lots of reasons to choose the food we eat, and almost every single one has a counter. There is no “free lunch” in terms of a long term nutrition plan which has no impact on the environment or other living creatures at scale.
We can argue some things may or may not be a “lesser harm,” but that becomes a shaky argument unless you are very selective on the sourcing of your foods to avoid all the many “traps” in which a seemingly “less harmful” choice can be entangled in suffering and destruction of the environment. We can each make the decisions we think best or that we can live with. Shaming people into one’s beliefs isn’t generally a good strategy both in terms of effectiveness as well as philosophically.
Drawing the line there is really strange. Most people that think like this, at least in the western world, are living a pretty big delusion regarding horses. A lot of people in the west have some stigma about eating horses. It goes back to the fact we used to bond with them. For a decent amount of people they interacted with their horse as often as other people riding it back and fourth as their only source of vehicle work. So in the west we don’t eat horse meat because that would be “wrong” or less moralistic folk might say they’d feel bad. In reality anyone that eats anything with cane sugar is eating a horse product. Horse bone char is used in making cane sugar so anything containing that is a horse product. Anything “jello-y” contains likely horse sources gelatin to give it that wiggle.
Very true. Horse meat is also high in protein and generally lower in fat than many other cuts of meat. It can be said that cultural aspects play a big role in horses not being livestock, and horses have generally been historically more “useful” in labor and other needs like transportation than animals like cows. There is another component too- especially in the Americas there is a long standing idea that horse is not good meat. A common older insult for meat dishes is to compare something to horse meat. Because horses tended to be working animals and horses tend to be very active the average horse a person might have tried to eat had a higher chance of being tough or off tasting. When working animals are used for food it has traditionally been when they reach a point in life like old age where they cannot produce work efficiently- which could compound the issue. Horses more suited for eating are said to be quite good- depending on taste. Oddly rabbit was also excluded and rabbit…
.. is and has long been a common and popular dish in Europe and the Americas among other places. Like horses, rabbit tends to have cultural protections (not for work but as pets or as generally “cute” to the mass population where as animals like cows have come to be seen as cute but historically perhaps less so…)
Rabbit is not a meat commonly found in most American super markets or as prevalent in commercial farming as chickens, cows, pigs etc. so the fact that even though most of the population do not regularly encounter or associate with horse or rabbits is offset by the fact that for at least 2-3 generations these meats haven’t been a staple of the average diet let alone even something many people will ever be exposed to. That makes it unlikely people will expect or demand meat like rabbit and thus it isn’t carried and thus less demand etc.
One of the things that keeps rabbit of American tables is the way it’s handled by the USDA. You can’t sell meat that isn’t USDA/FDA approved. But also, Rabbit doesn’t trigger a mandatory inspection—so it’s elective which means you have to pay for USDA inspection (whereas cows and chickens etc are inspected as part of requirement) and wait for a time when an inspector is available. On the other side of that, because it’s an elective inspection you can (through great pains) get your facility USDA approved and then apply for and FDA approval. This makes the product commercially viable because it isn’t a mandatory inspection item. It’s convoluted and tedious. And rabbits aren’t like chickens—baby rabbits won’t survive if their mama doesn’t care for them and she won’t if she is stressed.
This would have been much more effective if they had mixed up the order of the animals, instead of arranging them nicely so the line can be drawn by basically anyone where they would reasonably want it.
Actually something I’m realizing now. If you were to be very uncharitable in your “taking implications from the image” there are a couple things you could say.
PETA shows multiple dog breeds, the selection of animals is very small and very lacking in diversity. There are no fish there. Arguably one could interpret that super uncharitably as “anything not shown is something peta doesn’t consider important enough to display as unjustly food” which would mean any dog that isn’t those specific breeds is food, any breed of cat that isn’t those specific breeds is food, any breed of cow that isn’t one of the 2 shown is food, any fish is food, any rats, squirrels, beavers, etc are all valid food.
We can ask the question of where one draws the line for food in general- there is obviously a ranking because I don’t see any plants up there as lives being taken by eating. Are plants sentient? Probably not by our definition- plants are very different than us, so then can we say that it’s ok to eat them or their lives are worth less because they are so different or alien to us?
We can argue some things may or may not be a “lesser harm,” but that becomes a shaky argument unless you are very selective on the sourcing of your foods to avoid all the many “traps” in which a seemingly “less harmful” choice can be entangled in suffering and destruction of the environment. We can each make the decisions we think best or that we can live with. Shaming people into one’s beliefs isn’t generally a good strategy both in terms of effectiveness as well as philosophically.
Rabbit is not a meat commonly found in most American super markets or as prevalent in commercial farming as chickens, cows, pigs etc. so the fact that even though most of the population do not regularly encounter or associate with horse or rabbits is offset by the fact that for at least 2-3 generations these meats haven’t been a staple of the average diet let alone even something many people will ever be exposed to. That makes it unlikely people will expect or demand meat like rabbit and thus it isn’t carried and thus less demand etc.
PETA shows multiple dog breeds, the selection of animals is very small and very lacking in diversity. There are no fish there. Arguably one could interpret that super uncharitably as “anything not shown is something peta doesn’t consider important enough to display as unjustly food” which would mean any dog that isn’t those specific breeds is food, any breed of cat that isn’t those specific breeds is food, any breed of cow that isn’t one of the 2 shown is food, any fish is food, any rats, squirrels, beavers, etc are all valid food.