Off Topic: Dog Fighting and Meat Eating

Is a person who eats foi gras who also opposes dog fighting intellectually consistent? Ted Frank asked the question, though I’ll frame it more broadly: Is it consistent to eat any meat at all while opposing dog fighting?

The lives of fighting dogs is nasty, brutish, and short. They are placed in tiny pens – usually in the basement. Free of sunlight or fresh air, their aggression grows. They are forced to endure grueling workouts, and if they do not perform well, they are killed.

Since the people responsible for dog fighting are heinous, the dogs are kicked, punched, hit with sticks and bats; they are shocked with cattle prods.  For more grisly details, read this brief.

 To create foi gras, geese who are already full have tubes placed in their mouths. Like the serial killer's victim in Se7en, the geese are force fed so much food until their live livers are enlarged.

 Both methods involve a high degree of animal cruelty. Both are provided for one reason only – human gratification. Both are also unnecessary. No one needs to eat fatty liver just as no one needs to watch dogs kill each other.

 Of course, all animal husbandry involves some level of cruelty. No animal reaches our table alive. Which is another way of saying every animal has first been killed. For us. 

A being that can feel pain and that has an emotional life and that posed us no harm us and wished us no ill will was nonetheless killed for us. And it gets worse. 

Even the average cow or chicken, being factory-produced, live a life of unimaginable cruelty. There are crammed into pins where they can’t move. They step in and breath the fumes of fecal matter. They become sick and are pumped full of drugs. You really should read “Meet Your Meat.” 

Yet we care about dog fighting but don’t care about animal husbandry? Why is that? 

Whether we admit it or not, other entities (and this includes animals) have value only to the extent that they are useful to us. Living things do not have value to themselves, as Immanuel Kant would not have argued, but rather have value as means to our ends. 

Dogs are companions. They give us unconditional love. As they evolved alongside with us, they protected us from wolves, and even to this day, they alert us to intruders. Dogs provide a service to us, this service can only be provided while they live, and thus they have value. We have tamed dogs, and thus we love them.

Other animals have value to us as nutrition – or as an indulgence. We don’t care about how chickens or cows or pigs live – or die – because their only purpose is to provide us food.

Indeed other cultures, dogs are viewed as nutrition. In those cultures, dogs are eaten. In China, dogs are beaten to death with sticks, much like in America, chickens are beaten to death with clubs. 

So people can eat foi gras or veal or factory-farmed poultry farm, safe in his or her intellectual consistency. 

Though that person might wonder... Should I live my life based on a different moral presupposition? While we tend to view Others are means to our ends, might we not live better lives viewing other living beans as having interests? 

Still, I eat meat.  So I am either a scoundrel or dilettante.  I either don't know the truth, or I know the truth and don't care.  In my defense, I did forgo eating meat. For a month. 

It was the worst month of my life. I couldn’t sleep. I had no strength. I couldn’t concentrate at school or at work. I found out that I cannot function normally on a vegetarian diet. I had to make a choice - the chickens or me? 

I choose the chickens.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that I can’t mitigate the harm. I only eat free-range chicken and grass-fed beef. (And I don’t eat veal or foi gras.) As one owner of an organic market once told me: “I’ve seen the farms. If I hadn’t been a vegetarian for so long, I’d eat this meat. The cows have wide open pastures and streams. Until the cow has its throat slit, it lives a very good life.” 

While I am still not entirely comfortable with the throats being slit, I can still sleep at night knowing that the dozens of animals I eat each year don’t suffer every day of their pitiful lives just so I can indulge my senses or find the energy to work another hour. So while I am still responsible for death, at least I am not as responsible for so much suffering.

Comments

[Alan]

I know what foi gras is and I LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!! Furthermore I have been to places like France and have been to tours of the foi gras farms. They are treated much better than you think and better than US chickens and turkeys. I had a personal tour and the ducks are dumb they eat what they want until the last month where they do feed by tube but I witnessed it in person and the ducks are not unhappy at all. They are like goldfish in that they love to eat and yes their liver is expanded but they are not treated badly. At least the farms I have seen in France. I commented to him that he could sell more as he had room but he replied," I am happy with my fixed amount I do every year and when they sell out they gone". Maybe US duck farms with our capitalistic tendencies over cram the ducks per square feet and that should be changed, but to outlaw them is NOT right!

Foi gras should be available to anyone whom wants to eat it. The ducks if treated like the farms I visited in France are not treated in humanly. I feel we should make every efforts in making sure all duck farms treat their ducks correctly but not ban them at all! The ducks I witnessed are treated like royalty and only their last month do they get fed twice a day with a tube and believe me they are not suffering.

I will make every effort to educate people that foi gras is a great food and that the ducks are not treated badly! I think ignorant people are taking it to the extreme and should be ashamed at your tactics and misrepresentation of foi gras!

[RAH]

Agonizing on being top of the food chain is absurd. The tiger feels no guilt killing his meal. As a human I feel no guilt in enjoying a good steak or chicken meal. I do think that good animal husbandry practices should be encouraged. I do not want to get sick by the overcrowding of chickens and the practices of feeding drugs and meat to fowl can lead to more communicable diseases. Bad idea and that leads to people choosing to go to another source for their food if they consider the food source too risky.

I believe that humans as being the stewards should maintain good practices and develop humane ways to kill our food. But we have been doing that for decades.

Dog fight and cock fighting are cruel and mean blood sports. As a dog lover I dislike the blood sport. However animals are property to dispose as we choose. So I do not feel I have the right to make a law depriving another person of their property rights.

[Brian Gardner]

That's the first I have heard of foi gras, probably because I am from India and it is not a delicacy here. I am glad I read this blog. Now I know what not to order in a restaurant.

I did some research after I read your blog entry. Wikipedia mentions an alternative way of producing fatty liver - " Award-winning Spanish producer Patería de Sousa produces foie gras under the brand Ganso Ibérico by taking advantage of the natural instinct of geese to fatten their livers in preparation for migration, which results in a seasonal product, as slaughter can only happen in winter, prior to migration."

I hope your blog raises awareness about unethical foi gras. I also hope people would blog more often about incidents which show kindness to animals. There must be hundreds of them out there.

One of the ways to resensitize humans is to make goodness fashionable.