Is eating your dead pet considered uncivilized?

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Like I said, the amount of mercury in shellfish is negligible. There is no need to avoid seafood altogether.



It won't kill you quickly, but mercury remains in the body for a very long time. It accumulates in the brain, liver and kidneys and damages these organs. It's a good idea to keep your mercury intake as low as possible, without missing out on omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids (which are also contained in shellfish, so there is no reason to eat vertebrate fish at all).

I agree with you about rape roleplay (and other forms of sexual roleplay that fall into the safe, sane and consensual category), but mutilating another person can't be justified by consent. Unless there is a pressing medical reason of course. If somebody consents to being dismembered and partially eaten by a cannibal, both victim and perpetrator are mentally disturbed. One needs help, the other needs to be behind bars.

On a strictly rational level, I can understand the argument that adults should have the right to do whatever they want unless they harm a third party. But sometimes, people are in a state of mind where they can't give consent. Wanting to be eaten is one of those disturbed states, imho.

Besides, certain things are deemed too disturbing by the vast majority. There is no rational reason why men shouldn't expose themselves to women in parks, why fathers shouldn't have sex with their consenting daughters, why people shouldn't hump animals, or why it's a crime to sit naked at a street corner and masturbate. It's simply part of the social contract with society not to engage in these behaviors, because it freaks people out. The same goes for cannibalism, consensual or otherwise.

Ultimately, the best argument against cannibalism is that human sacrifice, especially the fetishized and ritualized kind, is the territory of religious cults. As a secular humanist, I think we should leave this barbarism behind us. Even the symbolic cannibalism that is practiced by Christians is quite disturbing, imho.

The cult example also shows that apparent consent is not always consensual. Suggestible people can be talked and brainwashed into doing the craziest things. I bet the victim of the Rotenburg cannibal didn't think "oh my, this feels so good, just as I imagined it". The poor guy probably thought "oh sh*t, I'm going to die, what have I gotten myself into here". It is our responsibility to protect weak-willed and easily exploited individuals from psychopaths.

It isn't your responsibility at all.

You may feel like some kind of contract was signed by everyone who will ever live ever, but that simply is not true. Just because you think something is deranged, does not mean it should be illegal.

Sure, there are consent issues when it comes to killing someone and eating them. I agree with that. However, if I want to have a small piece of my shoulder removed for someone else to consume, and he does the same, what right do you have to say that we can't do that? What gives you that authority? The fact that you think it's deranged?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r65FgUYdBOc[/youtube]

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

I think the biggest problem with the OP premise is that we're talking about a road-killed dog. Road-killed anything isn't something you want to eat as hunters field dress deer and other animals for a reason.

Other than that; it does seem a bit at odds with internal definitions. It would be like if your parents died, left you among other things some type of wooden plaque or decoration that they'd had from before you were born, and spontaneously one day when you decided to start a fire out back you decided to smash up that ornament for firewood rather than use the half-chord of chopped wood sitting by the side of the house. Should that be illegal? No. Unless you hated or were abused by your parents would it be an unusual choice? Yes.

You're using several reductio ad absurdum arguments in your post. I didn't say it was my responsibility to protect people from psychopaths, but "our" responsibility (as a society). That's why we have laws against cannibalism, consensual or otherwise. And I never claimed to have any authority in this matter, nor do I want to. The authority to decide what behavior is acceptable lies with the legislators that are elected by the majority.

The social contract exists between you and the society, not between you and everyone who ever lived. You agree to this contact by living in your country and taking advantage of its infrastructure. People who don't agree with laws against cannibalism have two options: They can either move elsewhere or become politically active. But personally, I'm glad that we have laws against this. I'm not an authoritarian by any means (pretty much the opposite actually), but I wouldn't consider a society civilized that allows cannibalism.

It is considered uncivilized in our society because it is a "resorting to doing" type of action.

Eating roadkill implies that the person is either to poor to afford groceries or ammo, or too lazy to work or hunt, or both. Roadkill is considered nasty. Where I live, there is a running joke about that. When you see a possum run over by the side of the road, you point and say "Dinner! Stop and get it!"

It's considered partially civilized, but still sniggered at, to eat a deer that you hit with your car accidentally, even though it's perfectly fine to eat a deer you shoot. There is a certain level of laziness or poverty implied by doing that.

As for the incest topic from earlier in the thread, riddle me this.

With the sperm donor babies being fairly common now, there is no guarantee that two babies conceived by that manner, from different mothers and the same donor sperm won't some day grow up, meet, fall in love, and marry, thus risking having deformed children. Of course genetic testing would be an ideal way to prevent this, but not all donor babies know that they were donor babies. It's conceivable that a half brother and sister could marry legally and have children.

I remember having it at a Vietnamese/Cambodian place in the Pittsburg area once. That sounds about right. When I got it I wasn't expecting to shark fin to look the way it did, looked more blossomy like they'd put some kind of strange flower in there but the leathery texture turned me on to the fact that I was eating something much more protein-based. Also yeah, they don't do so bad for themselves in terms of soup bases, I'm sure with the right dog coconut curry you might never realize you were eating dog.

What about all the people in China who eat dogs?

I think that it's kind of creepy to eat your pet dog or cat.
I wouldn't mind eating a pet chicken, pig, or rabbit though.

It's just my upbringing.

Well, you might be also drawing the line between a traditional indoor vs. nontraditional outdoor. I get the feeling that if a person has a miniature pig that lives in the house, has a collar, and was a part of the family like a dog rather than, say, something in a cage or aquarium, that tends to reinstate the emotional barriers somewhat.

Also, you have to remember that different cultures have different ideas of which animals are food animals.

In the culture I grew up in (Deep South, but urban/suburban) food animals were cows, pigs, chickens, turkeys, etc. In the culture that I am in now (Deep South, rural) take all the regular ones and add deer, wild boar, goat, rabbit, squirrel, possum, raccoon, etc. In the culture I grew up in, it would be considered uncivilised to eat squirrel or possum. Here, it's considered normal.

In Western culture, dogs and cats and other domesticated animals, or animals that are thought of as domesticated, are not eaten as a general rule, and we look at people who do eat them as being strange or backwards.

Even in an urban setting, the particular parts of food animals that you eat can put you into a "class". People who eat chitlins (pig intestines), pig feet, pig jowls, pig brains, etc are often considered either low class "city" or "flat out country".

As for an animal that belongs to you, I'd imagine your relationship with it would be the factor in determining whether or not eating it if it was killed by a car, would be uncivilised. (BTW, not all animals killed by cars are flattened, or even disfigured, so I'm sure you could get a good deal of edible meat from them) A for instance would be if you raised pigs in your back yard that you planned on taking to the butcher to kill for you to put in your freezer. If one of them were hit by a car, that just means you eat them sooner. You don't have a personal relationship with that pig.

If you come from a culture that eats dog meat, and you have a guard dog in your back yard that isn't a pet or you don't have a close relationship with it (ie; you don't play with them, pet them other than one or two pets when you feed them, etc) then eating them wouldn't really be uncivilised, although it would probably be thought of that way by those in our culture because we don't eat dog meat.

If you come from a culture that eats horse meat and you either raise horses for selling or breeding and you don't ride for pleasure or interact with a particular horse much then I wouldn't think eating them is uncivilised.

I think it boils down to your emotional attachment to the animal. It's only uncivilised if you are emotionally attached to an animal, or it's a pet in your household. Even if you have no emotional attachment to it, if it's a pet in your house, it's uncivilised to eat it. ie; if you come from a culture that eats dog and your wife's annoying little barking yap yap dog gets hit by a car and you hate that dog, it's still not really good to eat it. It's the violation of someone else's feelings to do so.

When I was growing up, a friend of mine's crazy grandfather decided they needed to have chickens. We lived in the city. The outskirts of the city, but still had close houses, sidewalks, traffic, very small yards, etc. He bought chickens and put them in shopping carts with plywood on top of them. Now, never being around live chickens I thought they were pets. I petted them. A lot. Every day when I went over I played with the chickens. Pops even got one or two out for me and let me chase it around the yard. My friend said "thats a bad idea, she's not going to understand" (about me). Pops said "Oh, of course she will". My friend didn't go into detail, just said "trust me, you don't want to get close to those chickens, you won't like how it turns out". Not understand him, I thought he meant I might get pecked or something. I had a great time with the chickens.

I also ate dinner with them three or four times a week after I took my friend to his baseball practice.

You know where this is going.

One day after practice we came in the front door, not the back, and supper was ready and we were starving, so we sat down and ate. Typical Southern dinner. Fried chicken (yep), potatoes, gravy, green beans, biscuits, tomatoes, etc. I didn't even think about the outside chickens. After we ate Pops said "Now see, she was just fine with that! You got all in an uproar about nothing! Like always!" My friend looked at Pops and said "That's because she didn't know and I wasn't gonna tell her, now you blew it, YOU tell her, I'm going to take a bath!" Which he did, and Pops told me where the chicken came from.

That was the first time I saw my friend naked, because he was in the tub when I ran into the bathroom to throw up. He sat there calmly bathing and said "I told you not to mess with Pops chickens". Granny felt bad for me, but she was the only one. She said if she knew I didn't know she wouldn't have served it.

It was years before I ate chicken again. With a clear consciounce anyway.

My mother told me a somewhat similar story about rabbits. My grandmother bred them back in the day, and my mother and her sisters were terribly fond of the little baby bunnies and regarded them as pets. When they eventually made the mental connection between the occasional rabbit stew and the adult rabbits that died under mysterious circumstances, they refused to eat rabbit for a long time.

She also told me horrible stories about how my grandmother used to force-feed ducks in order to fatten up their livers. Ugh.

I never really understood that. I once made a comment about eating chicken, pig and cow hearts to an online friend who lives in the USA, and he was utterly disgusted. Around here, we eat almost all parts of animals, and the rest is made into sausage (which is one of the meat products that I won't eat, but only because the nitrite curing salts in processed meat are carcinogenic). I often buy a cow heart or a bag of chicken hearts for dinner. It's very lean muscle meat and utterly delicious. On top of that it's quite cheap, and the cats love it too.

I just can't eat organ meats. I know in some cultures they eat kidneys quite often, but the idea that kidneys were at one time full of urine just does me the same way as what chitlins were at one time full of.

I have a good friend whose grandparents come from Romania, Hungary, and Poland. His family still keeps a lot of their cultural practices. (He's Romany) One of the things they do at some of their extended family get togthers is roast a whole sheep, head and all. In his family this is done at weddings a lot. They roast it in the ground. The groom's father gets the "best piece" which is the HEAD. The entire head. With brains, tongue, eyes, the whole shebang! They stuff it some way with vegetables and cheese as well in the mouth. When his son got married he said he loved eating it. He even ate the eyes.

I hope to God he was just messing with me for a gross out reaction.

My grandfather used to eat pig brains. My grandmother would cook them in scrambled eggs for him when I was little. The whole thing was cooked in bacon grease. I never noticed that his eggs looked any different than mine, they were brownier and a bit lumpier. It was only once when I went into the kitchen while she was cooking his and SMELLED IT (it smells exactly like what you think it would smell like) that I put the two together. I didn't eat eggs for a long time, and even now I must have cheese in mine because regular eggs cooked in bacon grease look too much like his "brains and eggs". They sold, and still do sell, pork brains in cans in the grocery store.

I'm not much for trying new meats. Or parts of meats that I already eat. I was once given a sandwich at a place I worked by a friendly coworker. I didn't bring money for lunch and his wife packed his lunch. He was always very friendly. He was from Pakistan. I told him I had never tried Pakistani food, but would love to. Ajaz was always very friendly like that, and showed me pictures of his kids, and we talked on the phone outside of work and my husband and I went to his house, and he and his wife came to our house. They were new to the country and I would help explain things to him, or make phone calls for him. I never thought he would give me goat. It was good, but ewwwwww.