Here’s why your food preferences are unfair and irrational

Why do we choose to eat some animals, but not others? 

It is well known that spiritual beliefs often play a factor in people’s diets. Yet, giraffes and locusts are both kosher and halal, while Jesus never forbade Christians from wolfing down whales or dogs. Why is it then that only a comparatively small fraction of people, sometimes only in relatively isolated communities around the world, choose to eat these species? And why are countless edible animals not eaten at all?

Looking at the animal most commonly featured on plates around the world may be a good place to begin answering questions about what makes certain animals unpopular menu choices. Pound-by-pound, this would be the domestic pig, making up for 36% of all the animal matter consumed by humans, narrowly beating out Gallus gallus domesticus, a.k.a. the domestic chicken, at 33%. However, the numbers of individuals required to rack up these percentages tell a different story. 

Over 75 billion chickens must be slaughtered yearly to meet the growing global demand for their flesh, compared to an estimated 1.5 billion pigs a year. This number does not include the millions of layer hens required to satisfy the world’s growing demand for their eggs, which humankind consumes at an estimated rate of one thousand billion units per year. 

That’s 1, 000, 000, 000, 000 eggs every 365 days. 

Do numbers matter?

People are evidently comfortable making the choice to eat chickens and their unborn offspring. And it may be that the very fact that these birds are bred and kept in such numbers makes it easier for people to consume them rather than large wild animals like giraffes and whales, whose populations are far smaller and localized. Governments have even established multinational organizations like CITES to regulate and sometimes ban the trade of products derived from species whose small population sizes make them susceptible to extinction, suggesting a growing number of people are against eating endangered species. Conversely, this would also suggest that people are more willing to eat animals that exist in large numbers. But these initial suggestions do not hold to scrutiny. 

But what about insects?

Many species are notoriously numerous, including locusts. One small swarm roughly 1 km2 can be up to 80 million strong. Various cultures throughout these swarming grasshoppers’ range take advantage of this seasonal bounty of animal protein, incorporating them into their diet, as do other populations with other insect species the world over. Entomophagy still struggles to find acceptance in Western societies, however, where insects are perceived as unappealing, if not outright unsanitary and unsafe for human consumption (even though most zoonotic disease outbreaks have been traced back to commonly eaten animals, including pigs, chickens, and their eggs).

Humans also harvest exorbitant quantities of fish and seafood from the ocean every year. Indeed, while whales’ endangered status is cited as a principal reason behind the International Whaling Commission’s ongoing ban on whaling, no such multinational legislation exists to protect any of the endangered tuna species. Further, both insects and fish can be mass-produced in the same manner as chicken and other livestock, while producing insect protein requires far fewer resources than chickens, pigs, or cows. Despite bugs’ sustainability and nutritional value though, people in industrialized nations seem to prefer eating more familiar farmed animals. 

Does domestication matter?

This does not seem to be a factor either. Familiarity with a domestic species can, in fact, be why some people choose not to eat animals like cats and dogs. One argument for these exceptions could be that neither of the two were originally domesticated for food, although neither were chickens. Their wild ancestor, the Indian jungle fowl, was originally tamed for cockfighting. Only later did people begin to eat their flesh and eggs, a historical turn that also occurred with cats and dogs in many regions around the world, as these are eaten from East Asia to the Americas. Nowadays, however, the latter two are nearly universally regarded as companions while consuming them has become increasingly ostracized. For instance, the pressure on countries like South Korea to shut down their thriving dog meat market has been growing in recent years, while in a rare instance of bipartisan legislation, the Dog and Cat Meat Trade Prohibition Act of 2018 formally illegalized such practices in the United States.

But if these aren’t it, then what characteristics lead people to choose to eat some animals while ignoring, even protecting others? What, separates chickens from dogs, and whales from tuna, the so-called chicken of the sea? 

Because they are not like us?

One last argument could be that people choose not to eat animals that are too similar to humans, either because they are close biological relatives or because we share a higher kind of intelligence. Meanwhile, people’s sense of kinship with fish like tuna and birds like chickens is likely to be weak if present at all. Biologically, however, dogs, whales, cattle, pigs, and thousands of other mammals are all members of ferungulata, a vastly diverse group that split from our family, primates, millions of years before the days of the T-rex. In short, Homo sapiens are just as closely related to all these species, some of which they choose to kill and consume in exorbitant quantities, some of which they provide with luxury food. Intelligence or perception thereof does not fully explain these distinctions either. The widely acknowledged intelligence of pigs has done little to prevent people’s craving for pork, while recent studies suggest that the intelligence of chickens has been unjustifiably underestimated and may rival that of cats and dogs.

This is all to say there doesn’t appear to be any heads or tails to how people in industrialized societies choose which animals are acceptable to eat and which aren’t. All distinctions between these species used to rationalize these choices are arbitrary, inconsistent, and irrational. They are little more than cultural prejudices based on unfounded assumptions about some species that have the effect of deeming their lives expendable for human consumption, a kind of discrimination against their suffering. It is, in short, a form of speciesism.

Say what?

Oxford animal rights activist Richard D. Ryder was the first to popularize the term. Arguing that "race” and “species” are both vague terms used in the classification of living creatures according to physical appearance, Ryder drew an analogy between the unequal treatment of racialized people and the uneven ethical considerations applied to different animal species. Since then, other science philosophers like Peter Singer and Richard Dawkins have also engaged with the concept. While acknowledging that the word is rather awkward, Singer agrees with its premise and argues we must give equal consideration to the pain experienced by all beings who share the capacity to suffer. Meanwhile, Dawkins considers that the human tendency to divide the world into units like races, cultures, and species reflect nothing but the limitations of our minds and our use of language. Within these purely subjective categorizing systems that represent animals as discontinuous species, he writes, the agency and suffering of some species can be recognized while those of others is denied or overlooked if it favors the survival of “our group”, be it a culture, race, or species.

The question of survival

The ability to prioritize the survival and wellbeing of the self and those most closely related was a valuable evolutionary advantage (pre)historically speaking given the precariousness most animals experience in the wild. This is also why cannibalism occurs. But in industrialized nations, human survival is no longer tied to the consumption of other, less related organisms. The fact that most people in such societies already choose to abstain from eating several animal species indicates they are at least partially aware of this. Thus, raising awareness of both the availability of vegetable-based foods, as well as the numerous physical and neurological characteristics we share with widely eaten animals may be key if the goal is to steer people away from current speciesist dietary practices. Already, a study out of New Zealand indicates that people’s attitudes towards chickens improve significantly when given the opportunity to spend time with these smart, sentient, and sociable animals. Perhaps interspecies encounters with the animals people still choose to eat can lead to the eventual realization that these most, if not all species, are complex beings whose right to life and freedom from suffering we should consider.

Alex Ventimilla is a Ph.D. student in English & Film at the University of Alberta. He holds a B.A. in English Literature & Society cum laude from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and an M.A. in English & Film Studies from the University of Alberta. His primary research interests are animal/habitat studies and the environmental humanities.