So I saw this article on CNN (Go to it here)
about a market in China where Cats and Dogs are sold for meat. This made me ask the question; what makes it appropriate to eat an animal? What differentiates cattle and hogs from cats and dogs. I have heard it said that pigs are clever and many people keep pigs as pets. Certainly many a 4H participant has cried themselves to sleep as thier prize steer was taken to slaughter. Is thier a signifigant difference in intelligence from cattle and hogs to dogs and cats? I do not know. What type of intelligence would you measure to make this determination? Again no idea but I am sure someone wrote a dissertation on it somewhere. It seems to me that it is purely a social construct. People in the United States keep dogs and cats as pets and attribute human characteristics to them. Therefore people in the US find it unsettling to think of dogs and cats as food.

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