Dogs Are For Soup

While it is unfortunate that it took NRA support, I applaud the defeat of a Pennsylvania bill that allows the criminal prosecution of anyone who “[breeds,] keeps, sells, offers for sale or transfers a dog or cat for the purpose of human consumption." I also favor keeping slaughter houses for horse meat legal.

Eating dogs, cats and horses is a matter of taste, not a crime.  Many perfectly law abiding people in other parts of the world eat these animals, and animals are not people, no matter how much we might wish to imagine otherwise.  Given a choice, I will almost always side with the People Eating Tasty Animals version of PETA and not the often extremist People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that wants us to call fish "sea kittens."

Now, this is not to say that I don't believe that cruelty to animals shouldn't be subject to a criminal sanction.  Torturing animals for cruelty's sake, rather than merely killing them for utilitarian purposes, is a characteristic trait of a psychopath and is often used as a means of intentionally inflicting distress upon, or threatening people.  But causing a swift death to an animal for food, or for advancing a clearly identified research objective in medical science is not cruelty.