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Comment by neuronic | Hacker News Reader

For most Asians and especially the Chinese, animals are just objects. Doesn't matter if you think about mammals skinned alive in some Chinese markets, turtles having their feet chopped off or Huskys locked into a 1-bedroom apartment for their entire life.

Asians mostly do not give a single damn about animal well-being. That's a uniquely Western thing.

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Please don't take HN threads further into nationalistic flamewar. Last thing we need here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

It's a uniquely western thing to pontificate about how enlightened we are about animal welfare while simultaneously funding the majority of the global meat industry - maybe. While it's true some Asian countries eat animals "taboo" to eat in "the west", large parts of these industries comes from countries pulled out of the brink of famines just a few generations ago and many young people/adults in the developed parts of those countries have already moved away from consumption them or cruelty certain animals viewed as "companions". Spare the preaching about us caring about other animals though. I don't see why eating, say, a horse is any more ghoulish than eating a pig.

A lot of those animals that became taboo to eat in the West was due to industrialization making pork, beef, and poultry cheaper than other meats and driving them out of the market, and cultural attitudes following afterwards to make them taboo. The "west" ate plenty of strange meats at the dawn of the industrial revolution. Hot dogs sausages often had dog meat in them while they were native to Germany, and you could still find horse and dog meat sold in the early 1900s.

https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1907/06/23/106...

You can still buy horse meat for human consumption in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag%C3%B9#:~:text=horse https://stefangourmet.com/2013/02/23/there-is-nothing-wrong-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horse_meat#Italy

They had horse days at the cafeteria when I was doing my post doc in Switzerland. It isn’t bad, but really chewy.

Cats too! "Dachhase / roof bunny" was a thing during WWII.

There are many western slaughter houses that don’t give a damn about animal wellbeing.

Videos have come out, a few wrists get slapped, and the abuse continues. The western masses continuing to consume their product is tacit approval.

This isn’t a western vs eastern thing. It’s a human thing.

Ah yes. The birthplace of several religions that that introduced the moral worthiness of animals centuries (if not longer) before the West and the origin of all mock meats up until a few decades ago has no interest in animal well-being. Absolutely.

Do any of the Woke/critical theory people know if it's acceptable to say something like this ^ if you explicitly tie it to culture? Is it OK to say some regional cultures place more emphasis on animal cruelty than others?

Unsourced ties to "culture" across a huge region of a billion people and dozens of distinct langauges and cultures? Looks like a smear to me.

(also, does "Asian" include India and the Jain, for example?)

The thing is, most people saying this only pretend to give a damn because it reinforces the belief they already want to have that Asians are barbaric or undeveloped. It's just back-propogation of conclusions. So people are going to be raising eyebrows understandably if you bring this up randomly without knowing your facts. You can talk about how and historically why some animals were or are eaten in some places in some countries - sure. But that kind of nuanced and historic analysis isn't usually why they're talking about this in the first place.

It has nothing to do with being "woke". It's laughably innacurate.

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