SEOUL: South Korea aims to ban eating dog meat and put an end to the controversy over the practice amid growing awareness of animal rights, a ruling party policy chief said on Friday (Nov 17). The Korean practice of eating dogs has drawn criticism from overseas for its cruelty but there has also been incre
If you banned driving cars, there just wouldn’t be any cars around. That analogy has little to do with dogs. What is it about a ban that makes no sense to you?
You can replace cars with anything else and it still makes no sense. It’s no one else but the thieves who should take the consequences.
We ban things we want less of. More eating dogs means a bigger market for all dog meat, which means a bigger market for theft. I want less of that.
People don’t steal things that no one wants to buy.
I’m talking about the side effects of fostering a culture where eating a non-livestock animal is ok. My argument is that this kind of culture is pointlessly cruel to an animal that we’ve explicitly bred to be a companion.
One element of discouraging a culture is government action, a ban (coercion). I argue this is a necessary step in ending a cruel practice.
The other is cultural compliance (people behaving in a certain way regardless of the presence of law enforcement officials). I argue this is a necessary step as well, by way of education and improving access to alternatives.