There's animal ears, tails, tongues, hearts, lungs, kidneys, feet, claws, skin, even stomachs and eye balls. There's also powdered horns, testicles and bodily juices extracted from animals like bears.
As well as beef, lamb, goat and chicken flesh people in various countries eat rats, mice, dogs, cats, horses, donkeys, rabbits, hares, frogs, deer, grasshoppers, ants, snakes, buffaloes, kangaroos and crocodiles. People even drink blood or eat it as a jelly.
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| The "cultured" Chinese Eat Cats |
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| ...and Dogs Bird food includes sparrows, larks, emus and ducks. Insects include ants and witchery grubs. Fish food includes egg roe, whelks, cockles eels,even tuna eye. Other 'seafood' unfortunately includes mammals like whales and dolphins. |
People have even eaten each other and it's rumoured they still do in certain parts of the world.
You might expect that over a period of thousands of years our food tastes would change. For example in this modern age of awareness you might not expect Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans to eat dogs and cats which they have done for several hundred years. Yet they still do, very much so. Dog is as common a meat as any other despite the modern cities and lifestyle.
While the western world does not eat dogs and cats it does eat horses and frogs, as in France. In fact the French eat and export a disgusting item called foie gras which is basically a very fatty duck or goose liver. The poor birds are force fed by machine to create the fatty liver and of course suffer terribly and die in the process.
In the West mostly beef, pork and chicken are consumed. In the Middle East countries its sheep, goats, camel and chicken. But often you find people will try other meats just for curiosity. For example in Australia they now eat kangaroo, crocodile and buffalo.
I'm now vegetarian and it saddens me how we earth creatures eat each other, usually in the dead state and sometimes while still alive. People rarely question the eating of a fellow animal and its morality.
Food nowadays is based on meat because that's the way animal farmers and the food industry want it. It's very big money for them, colossal world wide.
Billions of animals and birds are slaughtered daily by factory farms and the food industry. Many consumers don't realise the horrible cruelty involved in the rearing and the killing of these poor creatures - or that modern meat is not a truly healthy product or that the industry produces enormous pollution and water wastage in the world.
My point is that whatever you eat – whether it be another person, a mouse or a grasshopper – you need to count the cost to your body and the environment. There's actually no requirement for man to eat meat. You can get everything you need from veg and fruit.
So instead of consuming every living thing on earth why don't we try being kind to the animals. Just don't eat them. Like us, they know fear and pain, joy and sadness. Most creatures feel all of these things, just like we do. They are sentient beings.
Let's make our dining more civilised and compassionate - and environmentally responsible.
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