Letters to the Editor
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Your normality, my barbarity
I wonder if the author has ever watched a wildlife documentary? One with wolves "cruelly" separating a young animal from the herd, running it into the ground (its eyes wild, its nostrils flaring with terror) and then eating it alive, utterly immune to its cries of pain?
Not the same thing? Are humans not animals, then?
I wonder if the author is aware that most Chinese that I have spoken to about the topic view the American practice of shipping grandma and grandpa off to a nursing home at their most vulnerable time, to die surrounded by indifferent strangers, as utterly barbaric and unfeeling?
Not the same thing? I love you, Mom, but not enough to care for you like you cared for me. It's just not _convenient_. This is more "humane" than eating a dog?
I wonder if the author would deny drugs to his children, if said drugs had been tested or developed using animals?
Not the same thing? So there's a calculus of animal suffering?
"Human" and therefore "humane" is quite simply a bigger and more complex beast than simply "the stuff that Ted Kerasote feels comfortable with".
Animals of all kinds have been food for the entirety of human history. Which doesn't make it right. Which doesn't make it not cruel. But it does make it a complex issue that is intertwined deeply with who we are as tribal, cultural, regional, social human beings. Your barbarity is my normality, and vice versa.
It is a complex issue that is not served by this inaccurate, sexed-up "one anecdote and a bunch of guesswork" article. Really, this is an amazingly low-rent attempt to tie diet preferences -- and Ted Kerasote's personal beliefs about them -- to the Olympics (I mean, really, could any two things be _less_ connected?!).