Many of you might have heard about the recent meat scam in West Bengal. Basically, a huge chain was apparently supplying rotten chicken and the meat of dogs and other dead animals picked up from dump yards and garbage. Anyway, leaving the gruesome details apart, a meat crisis was naturally a cause of immense discontent for a non-vegetarian lover like me.
Soon after the scam broke out, I had a dinner date with my office colleagues and we got to thinking what we could have at the restaurant. Even though all of us enjoyed veg food, a dinner date did not sound complete without some meat and chicken. We weighed our options between dead dog and rotten chicken and finally ended up ordering chicken. All this while, there was one question that kept on playing in my mind, why does it feel okay to eat certain animals and weird to eat others?
I have always been a big foodie and I have had chicken, mutton, beef, pork, quail, squid, octopus and various other kinds of non-vegetarian delicacies. And while the choice of edible and inedible animals vary across the world, I am sure all of us are comfortable consuming some animals while consuming some others do not feel so okay. Dogs and cats for instance, do not fall in the edible category for many of us, even though we are totally fine with mutton or pork. I wonder why. Is it because they are domestic creatures? But then so are cows and buffaloes.
Today I read an article about a man who was jailed for selling cat samosas for 8 years. Why is it that eating some animals seem cool but eating some others don't? Is it because of mindset or is it because of our love for some animals and indifference about others? Does the love for different kinds of meat make us more animal like or is it just a lifestyle choice like clothes? Why is it so that selling chicken samosas will make you rich but selling cat samosas will land you in prison? I wonder....
