Dog Crazy in Asia

SFGate's Jeff Yang writes about how the rising affluence and aging demographics of East Asia are contributing to a rise in dog ownership which is rapidly eclipsing old stereotypes about Asians and dog-eating. The thing is, as Yang points out, the stereotypes are indeed true, at least where Korea and China are concerned (the Japanese, as far as I know, have never gone in for dog meat), with an alleged 6,000 restaurants in Korea still serving dog-based cuisine.

To be honest, I don't see what there is to be apologetic about on the part of those who eat dogs, as doing so isn't intrinsically any worse than eating cows, horses or pigs, and those Asians who feel a need to apologize for or downplay this aspect of their native culture seem to me to be suffering from a serious cultural cringe - and I say all of this as someone who actually likes dogs, for the most part (no Staffordshire Terriers, Pit Bulls, Rottweilers or other thug-favored breeds for me).

Comments

[Factory]

"at least where Korea and China are concerned"
Hmm IIRC, in China it's the Cantonese who have the reputation of eating everthing that breathes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantonese_cuisine
Seems to agree.

[Chuckles]

I have always wondered: How did Dogs become part of the diet of some cultures? This phenomenon seems to be in the minority and certainly cant be explained by normal domestication theories: Even more interesting is a population of Dog-eaters surrounded entirely by non Dog-eaters.

[Andrew]

"How did Dogs become part of the diet of some cultures?"

How did any animal become part of the diet of any culture? I don't see why dogs are a priori such an unlikely food source (or more so than any other animal) or why eating dogs couldn't be explained by normal domestication theories.

[Chuckles]

Dogs are supposed to have diverged from wild canines and become domesticated through Natural selection: This would make no sense if Humans ate Dogs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog

[...It is also now generally believed that initial domestication was not attained deliberately by human intervention but through natural selection: wild canines who scavenged around human habitation received more food than their more skittish counterparts; those who attacked people or their children were probably killed or driven away, while those more tolerant animals survived, and so on...]

[Andrew]

It's easy to imagine eating dogs *after* they became domesticated even if using them as a food source wasn't motivation for intentionally domesticating them. Anyway, it's not even as though animals need to be domesticated for them to become a valued food source for even non-hunter-gatherer cultures, e.g. venison.

[Jim]

The relationship with dogs is really symbiotic and probably both species edged into it over a period of centuries. We improve each others' hunting efficiency. As for the eating part, that would have been no problem for the dogs; they routinely kill and eat thier old or weak members, and in hard tmes they eat the puupies too, who are just going to starve anyway.

Dogs were the main meat in Mexico before the Spanish got there. Turkeys are for special occasions. Chihuahuas are just the right size for a stew for one family. They are incidentally very good company. All things being equal - edibility, I mean - the pleasant individuals would be the ones that lived the longest to breed.

The question is not why some cultures eat dogs, but why so few do. It reminds me of something a European said who had lived in Ghana, I think it was, when he saw lots of goats but no cheese. He wondered why nobody milked the goats and made cheese. People thought the idea of milking goats was both hilarious and a little icky.

[Ross]

"The question is not why some cultures eat dogs, but why so few do"

Raising a carnivourous animal for meat is inherently wasteful, so dogmeat is never going to be particularly widespread except as a delicacy or in an emergency.

[Andrew]

Dogs aren't exclusively carnivorous - more accurately described as omnivorous (unlike cats, which are exclusively carnivorous). But yes, that does explain why dog isn't a "staple" meat the way, say, pork is... Of course for pre-1492 Americans dogs were basically the only domesticated animal they had, so they had no other choice.

"He wondered why nobody milked the goats and made cheese."

Maybe the Ghanaians were lactose intolerant?

[Abiola Lapite]

But so were Europeans until relatively recently, so that can't explain it. There's certainly been enough time and gene flow across the Sahara for at least the Fulani to acquire the exact same version of the lactose tolerance gene Europeans carry, so why didn't it spread to other groups in West Africa?

[Andrew]

Yea, I suspect that lactose tolerance was probably selected for after people started eating a lot of dairy, rather than the other way around. (Or maybe it was like positive feedback...) Is there some reason that Europeans drink cow milk a lot more than goat milk (cows are easier to keep, produce more milk, etc?)? And (you know more about Africa than I do) do I recall correctly that you can't keep cows in certain parts of Africa because of tsetse flies? If that were so, that could explain it, as maybe you wouldn't start drinking goat milk if you weren't already in the habit of drinking cow milk... This also raises the question of why non-Europeans such as East Asians never got the habit of drinking milk...

[Abiola Lapite]

"Is there some reason that Europeans drink cow milk a lot more than goat milk (cows are easier to keep, produce more milk, etc?)?"

I have absolutely no idea myself, though I'd imagine goats would actually be easier to keep than cows, being much less fussy about what they eat.

"do I recall correctly that you can't keep cows in certain parts of Africa because of tsetse flies?"

Yes, that is correct - you can't go far below the Sahel before hitting the tsetse fly zone.

"This also raises the question of why non-Europeans such as East Asians never got the habit of drinking milk..."

This is even more mystifying, as there've never been any East-West cultural or environmental barriers to preclude the transmission of such habits to Asia, yet lactose intolerance in East Asia is even greater than it is in tsetse-fly afflicted Africa, reaching 99% amongst most populations there.

[radek]

This is a type of thing one can generate a lot of semi-silly hypothesis about. It’s all about opportunity cost of eating dog plus some cultural inertia:

1. Dogs won’t get eaten where they’re particularly useful otherwise. So no dog eatin’ where’s there’s a lot of sheep herding going on.
2. Dogs are useful in war and conflict. So lots of fighting in a given area means dogs get to perform the noble duty of sentry and such. Other areas they get ate. Lots of fighting in Europe. China stable and peaceful, so might as well have Spot for dinner.
3. In places with high population densities, where land is scare you raise animals that don’t need much space. Cattle is out, which is why the Chinese are the “pork people”. Dog works sorta similar.

Also, from my understanding even in China and Korea dog eatin’ is pretty rare. It’s something you might be willing to do rather than something you do all the time. So it’s not a ‘staple meat’ by any means. It’s a delicacy. It’s got to be a right kind of dog, of a right age, raised in the right way, prepared properly by a well trained chef. It’s an aristocracy thing. Fancy food. Like eating over stuffed goose liver. Which means semi-silly hypothesis contrived to explain it are, well, silly. Even more true for cat eatin’ since in any agricultural society their value as pest control exceeds their value as food. So it may be a status food.

If you seriously think about it, every culture on earth eats some weird crap. And any that doesn’t probably doesn’t deserve the moniker of “culture”.

[Abiola Lapite]

"Also, from my understanding even in China and Korea dog eatin’ is pretty rare. It’s something you might be willing to do rather than something you do all the time. So it’s not a ‘staple meat’ by any means."

Hmm, while I agree it's not a staple in the way a leg of chicken or a slice of ham might be, the mere fact that there are 6,000 restaurants serving it in Seoul alone (and not all of Korea, as I misstated in the post) suggests that it's very far from being rare. In fact, I've seen stats indicating 40% of Koreans have consumed dog meat, with a solid majority of men having chowed down on it (no doubt for reasons of "virility"). I've also come across several reports indicating that the animals being slaughtered are being bred on industrial-scale farms with 10,000 or more dogs each, so we can't possibly be talking about a rarely-indulged culinary habit here.

Then again, I don't see that there's anything wrong with dog-eating, and as such don't get why Koreans would want to downplay the practice as if it were a shameful holdover from their past. The thought of eating frogs, caviar or paté is far better cause for disgust as far as I'm concerned.

[Michael Stastny]

I've been told that the flesh of carnivorous animals tastes completely different. I think everybody who eats bunnies should have no troubles (morally) eating cats or dogs.

[Chuckles]

[...This also raises the question of why non-Europeans such as East Asians never got the habit of drinking milk...]

Very true. Drinking mare's milk was not uncommon among the Mongols - surely the conquests of the Mongols over a period of 300 to 600 years was enough to spread some milk drinking habits to the Far East?

On the main topic:
There are small dog-eating populations surrounded by larger non dog-eating populations. This is another scenario that calls for interesting hypotheses: I am aware that the Ondo-Yoruba are the only Dog-eaters among the various and surrounding Yoruba subsets (bar Ogun worshippers for religious reasons) and also, in Eastern Nigeria, the Calabar people seem to be the only dog-Eaters in that entire region (404, as they call dog meat). These arent isolated populations - in the present, nor during migratory processes: So I do wonder why the this particular eating habit hasnt spread, as much as say, Goats, Sheep or even the various kinds of "bush meat" common in West Africa.

However, I will admit that Dog eating has probably been more widespread than I previously assumed. I daresay that the current taboos on dog-Eating are like the current taboos on Horse eating: More a product of recent cultural ideas about life, humanity, rights, etc.

http://wolf.ok.ac.kr/~annyg/english/e6.htm

[Sean]

I don't think the population density had muchb to do with the decision to eat dogs: Manchuria (the three northeastern provinces of China) and Korea are mostly where dogs are eaten. And those areas aren't nearly as dense in population as the South of China.

[Abiola Lapite]

Actually, dogs are still eaten in Europe to this very day - in the Swiss cantons of St. Gallen and Appenzell to be precise.

http://blog.marmot.cc/archives/2004/01/14/and-you-thought-they-just-ate-fondue/

[Abiola Lapite]

(By the way, Mozilla users with the Greasemonkey extension installed can just download the Linkify script to have text links transformed into clickable URLs. I don't dare switch HTML comments back on for fear of spammers.)

[Julian Elson]

I would tend to agree about the moral seperation between eating dogs and eating pigs or cows being rather dubious, though I'd go on a limb and say that it is those cultures which eat pigs who should be ashamed, not those who eat dogs who should be guilt-free ;^). Not that I favor legal bans on dog-eating. However, I do find those Republicans who sate their thirsts on the blood of puppies rather disturbing: http://crookedtimber.org/2005/08/13/taking-a-stand/ .

I believe that the fact that the Japanese don't eat dogs much might be a more general aspect of their pre-Meiji aversion to eating mammals ("four legs"). The Japanese seem to prefer not to eat of their own class, forsaking mammalia for aves and osteichthyes. Ironically, of course, many western types are outraged by Japanese predation of the mammals that traditionally used to slip under the crude radar of "four legs" and be counted among the fish.

Have you seen http://www.petsorfood.com/ ? I found it fairly funny. Not quite as disturbing (at first glance, until you get the joke) as the bonsai kitten site, but funny anyway.

[radek]

"the mere fact that there are 6,000 restaurants serving it in Seoul "

"I've also come across several reports indicating that the animals being slaughtered are being bred on industrial-scale farms with 10,000 or more dogs each"

Yeah those are some serious numbers. But those 6000 restaurants are uncited and "alleged" which means there may be as much truth in them as in the Carroll Cox charges mentioned by Yang. I dunno about these industrial farms.

"seen stats indicating 40% of Koreans have consumed dog meat"

This one I believe. What I wrote above is based mostly on anecdotal evidence from conversations with Chinese and Korean friends. Most of them admit to it. But it's a "yeah, I've tried it once" kind of admission, not "yeah, every Tuesday was dog day back home" kind of admission.

(as an aside I've got a Chinese friend who's vegeterian and also a great cook. He regularly has dinners where he serves his friends all kinds of Asian 'fake-meat' dishes. Fake Chicken. Fake Beef. Fake Shrimp. All made out of saitan or tofu or whatever. So of course I always complain, "when you gonna serve us Fake Dog?" It's a pretty stupid joke, I know.)

So I think that while the stereotypes are true to some extent, it's not in a way most Westerners think. Koreans and some Chinese sometimes, occasionally eat dog. Westerners freak about it and exxagerate and embelish its extent.
The truth is in the middle.

"...This also raises the question of why non-Europeans such as East Asians never got the habit of drinking milk..."

This could be the cattle thing again. To economize on land use you raise pigs instead of cattle. No cattle, no milk.

Sean, you might be right. That's why I called'em 'semi-silly hypothesis'.

Actually I think the 'opportunity cost of animals as food' theory works better for horses. In most circumstances eating your horse was a dumb idea as it was much more valueable as labor and transport (and war armament). The French exception is again an exception - it's a delicacy so it's a form of 'consicous consumption' by the rich who want to announce 'see we're rich enough to eat our horses'. Otherwise only besieged soldiers eat their horses.

Julian, I think you're right and your argument sound. But this is one area where I admit my aesthetic sense trumps whatever moral sensibilities I might have with regard to animals. Or as a fella said "Mmmmmmm, bacon". And as Yang says "In many ways, food is the fundamental unit of culture", so if you remove some foods from the menu, the culture is less cultured for it.
I dunno, from the purely aesthetic point of view, to me it seems like vegeterianism is like self-castration. I don't think I could live as a culinary eunuch.

(ok, so it's more like practicing abstinence, since it's reversible)

[Abiola Lapite]

"But those 6000 restaurants are uncited and "alleged" which means there may be as much truth in them as in the Carroll Cox charges mentioned by Yang."

Sure - and they also may be the truth, or even an understatement for a metropolis of 11 million. The point is that by all credible reports, dog-soup restaurants are ubiquitous in Seoul, and this isn't something shameful that needs minimizing.

"I dunno about these industrial farms."

They're no urban legend.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/archives/2001/07/08/0000093207

["I eat it every day," said Han Fei, Peixian's biggest dog breeder and most likely China's, too. He describes himself as the "dragon head" of the industry, raising 100,000 dogs a year, almost all for slaughter at about six months of age.]

"So I think that while the stereotypes are true to some extent, it's not in a way most Westerners think. Koreans and some Chinese sometimes, occasionally eat dog. Westerners freak about it and exxagerate and embelish its extent."

No, I think this is actually a severe downplaying of the reality, which is that many people in Korea and China find dog meat tasty, and dog soup is popular in the former country, especially in the summer months. Why not admit the reality? It isn't as if it is a shameful activity which needs downplaying for the sake of Western sensibilities, or at least no more so than any other form of animal husbandry for meat.

If conceited Westerners turn their noses up at it as if it were some sort of horrible crime even as they continue munching on beef, mutton, pork and foie gras, that's their own silly business. The real travesty with this whole business is that Koreans aren't more forthright about telling foreign busybodies who don't like their culinary practices to piss off, instead of displaying an inferiority complex by trying to play down the reality of this long-standing and popular practice. In fact, I find this whole condescending business so annoying that I'd be of the mind to rush out and go buy myself a nice bowl of boshintang if I knew somewhere I could lay my hands on it, to give a gustatory middle finger to the Brigitte Bardot types who think it's their right to tell others what animals to eat.

[radek]

Well, I'm not trying to minimize it because I think it's shameful. I'd eat a dog, if it was a Poodle. But I do think that there's a good bit of sensationalism and freaking out going on in the West - a la Carroll Clark - which probably tends to exxagerate the extent of it.

Also the story says:
"It is a specialty meat in many parts of China, eaten occasionally in the winter for its supposed warming quality. But it is regular fare in Peixian"

So Peixian is exceptional, relative to rest of China where dog is eaten occasionally. So I don't think my friends are lying out of shame or anything. In Korea I think there's probably more of it but dog soup is 'traditional' in the same sense as cow-tongue sandwiches are traditional in Poland or meat pudding is traditional in England. It's traditional because it's unique to that particular culture not because everyone is munching on it all the time.

And yeah they should tell people to piss off if criticized.

[Pearsall Helms]

To be completely honest, I can't take seriously Westerners getting all freaked out about other cultures' eating habits when they'll happily eat stuff like hot dogs.

[Chuckles]

Why are there taboos against cannibalism? Prescriptions against Murder, I can understand - but the Cannibalism taboo is something I dont see to be exactly reasonable - at least, if what one is doing is condemning the eating of dead relatives.

The reason I am saying this is that the "sentimental value" defense that is applied against the eating, even of dead human beings, is probably what people, particular Westerners, apply to their condemnation of Dog eating. The riposte is that "Dogs are intelligent, etc etc etc". As someone who has experienced all kinds of culinary habits, cats, monkeys, alligators, elephants, etc: protein IS protein: whether it be from Grandma or Bambi: Yet, it is common for you to meet those Left / Liberal types who are always trying to *save* the Third World by condemning their eating habits. For instance, the Animal Rights brigades who criticise the hunting of game animal in Africa for culinary purposes.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/1209338.stm

But conservation and game replenishment respond to clearly defined property rights in a sense that evangelical campaigns to change eating habits can not hope to match.

I find the entire sentimental defense thing abhorrent: What exactly is this supposed to mean:

[..."We make them understand that these primates are friends and eating them is like eating a friend," says biology teacher Banseka Eriw, who organised the visit...]

Yeah, friends...

[...Although it is illegal to sell the meat that does not stop the traders...]

Duh!

[Jim]

Reference my commnet about goat milk in Ghana - I doubr lactose intolerance was the sole reason, since goat milk is lower enough in lactose to have been the normal substitute in Europe for generations among peope who for varius reasons, then unknown, oculdn't drink milk. As for making cheese, that may have more to d with restrictions the climate imposes. The American South and India also do not have cheeese-making traditions, although cows have been central to North Indian culture for millenia.

Back to dogs. First off, eating carnivores is not wasteful unless you are feeding these carnivores high value meat. If on the other hand these carnivores are going out and eating vermin, they are turning something worthless into something you can eat. Then too, dogs can live fine on a diet of beans and tortillas. Secondly, eating dog in eastern Asia seems to be very much a function of whre you are. Cantonese are known for it; northerners are not. But the Koreans are. Vietnamese eat dog, but Cambodians do not. This sounds more like a matter of identity with food as an identity badge, than economics.

As for pigs being more economical to raise than cows, that all depends on your terrain. Not all farmland is unrelieved cropland. Braudel made the point years ago that pasturing cows, sheep and goats on marginal land gave European peasants an edge by enabling to eat off of second-rate land. In the cae of sheep, which the landlords profited from, there was a lot of incentive to set land aside for that animal. This spared that land from conversion into marginal and fragile cropland. In China in the north people raise lots of sheep; it's the cheapest kind of meat, but they do not make cheese from the milk. That sounds more like a cultural barrier than anything else. Mongols do make sheep's milk cheese.

Chuckles's comment on eating habits and outsiders' disapproval. I understand that in a lot of East Africa the big threat to wildlife is competition for habitat with ranching. People need land for their cattle, and they don't want their cropland grazed by wild animals, naturally. They might see these animals in a different light if they ate them. Then again, they get more food from their cattle because they do milk them, than they would from hunting.