Accidental vegetarian. Maybe.

I think I have accidentally become a vegetarian. Or am at least in the process thereof.

Some back story: It is officially Summer in Korea. There are two "special" summer foods in Korea - samgaetang - a soup that is made with chicken and ginseng, and which is very good (link is to a recipe) - and bosintang (link is to Wikipedia) - dog soup.

I understand that there are cultural differences related to food, and there are things that we eat that other cultures think is unappetizing. Also, when you have people who are really poor, they will eat just about anything and will sometimes turn something I think of as gross into a delicacy (haggis, anyone?), which can get continued once the culture moves out of poverty. And, as always, I don't have to eat it.

But what bothers me is the way the animals are treated, and the way they are killed. There are dog farms all over the rural parts of Korea, and in most cases, the dogs are beaten before they are killed. I've heard two reasons - one is that it makes the meat more tender, and the second is that since the dog meat increases "male stamina" (yes, really, this is what they say) the adrenaline released from the fear and the pain increases that property.

A friend's house is on school grounds above the school's custodian. The custodian has a small dog farm. (THE LINKS ARE VERY GRAPHIC AND VERYVERY UPSETTING. You have been warned) and one night, I was talking about the whole dog meat thing right after a conversation about the American beef protest hoopla. A friend pointed out that the way we treat most animals raised for food in the US is pretty horrific, too, and perhaps I was being a bit hypocritical, judging one as ok and the other as wrong.

The point was more of a challenge of our "our way is right/their's is wrong" conversation, which is really good to raise when a group of (mostly) foreigners is talking about the country in which we choose to live. Also, she had a good point, and while I thought it over, I found myself getting more and more grossed out by meat, telling myself to just not think about how they were raised/killed, how it HAD to be much better than what offended me so much about the dogs here, just so I could eat. But when it comes down to it, if I have to make myself not think about what I'm eating, that is a huge problem.

Maybe if I had the option of "happy dead animals" I'd feel different - animals raised and killed ethically. But right now, that isn't an option and in the States, that is an expensive option. So for the time being, I'm sticking mostly to fish. I just don't even want beef or pork, and while I'm not ruling out poultry, I have no desire to cook it AT ALL.

I really have no idea where this is coming from, where it will go, or how long it will last, but seeing the dog farms, or the walk along what turned into a row of butcher shops with pig parts in buckets on the streets, or any of the other horrors of where meat really comes from (hey, did you know it wasn't from a styrofoam tray!?) while living here has turned me off meat, at least for the time being.