Restaurant Patrons Outraged over Lion Burgers
An Arizona restaurant recently caused a stir when announcing they would soon unveil a burger made from lion meat. The menu option was just one of a series of “exotic” food choices at Boca Tacos y Tequila including “python, alligator, elk, kangaroo and rattlesnake….frog legs, turtle, duck and Rocky Mountain oysters ” After a storm of public outrage, the restaurant announced the would be pulling the burger from the menu. Of course, it’s not that the restaurant won’t be serving animals, they just won’t be serving this animal. Of course, this is the Michael Vick moral schizophrenia all over again. By that I mean, animal people are outraged not merely by the use of animals but the use of particular animals. In the case of Michael Vick’s use of dogs for entertainment, no one questioned any of the other Eagles team members use of animals for food or clothing. Here are some of the comments left on the original article and my reactions to them: Shame on Boca restaurant. We will never go there and will spread the word about this. How they could even think about doing this is so unbelievable. Boycott, I never would patronize a place like this. This is beyond disgusting. He’s gotten his name out there alright, and I hope it causes his business to go bankrupt! These first two comments bring me to my first point: You bet it’s bad than lions are being killed for burgers, but why isn’t there any outrage about any of the other animals served at the restaurant? Some of the comments below answer this question in the minds of the public. If this was a lion that died of natural causes or was accidentally killed I don’t have a problem with it. Otherwise, I do have somewhat of a beef (no pun intended) with killing a large capitol predator for this. I think this is incredibly sad. These are elegant creatures that deserve better…May as well serve up the Bald Eagle next-or have they already done that? Really disgusting. I hope these people go out of business soon. Tucson already has a bad image around the country. Who could eat a cat? Hummm, maybe a Nogo taco stand. How could this be legal? ABSOLUTELY GROSS! DISGUSTING! UNCIVILIZED! What horrible people…It is because of this type of greed that more noble creatures are slaughtered every year…Pretty soon, lions will suffer the same fate as tigers and become nearly extinct…. One of the common themes here is the insistence that the elite nature of the lion is the core issue: “May as well serve up the Bald Eagle next” Contrast this to the issue of a sentient being’s interest in being sentient. (This is like a golden rule for me). It is pretty bad when someone wants to send the government after someone else merely because they don’t approve of what they eat. While I myself have no interest in eating a lion, I am not going to try to force my dietary habits on others. Once you open that door where does it stop? When all of us are surviving on tofu? I left this one here because it’s rather funny to vegan readers. There’s a few things wrong with it besides being a slipper slope fallacy. We come back to this idea of “forcing on others.” It’s a way of looking at the issue while completely disregarding the party for whom it concerns in the first place. It’s not a matter of your right to eat something, it’s a matter of the animal’s right not to be eaten. Would this person concede to his own logic and let us eat his loved ones? After all, (s)he can’t force his/her dietary habits on us. Also, the question is a bit like saying “They’re freeing slaves in Mississippi? What next, all of the southern states? We’d have freed slaves just running all over the place. Where do you stop? Where do you draw the line?” I don’t know if these commenters consider themselves “activists” for animals. However I do see many posts from people in the animal movement speaking out against Michael Vick, lion burgers, or whatever it may be. I think this is inappropriate. I realize some of my readers may instinctively come back saying “Inappropriate? What are you saying, that we should just keep quiet about this injustice?” My answer is: absolutely not. This conclusion is the mistaken “all-or-nothing” attribution of the abolitionist approach. We should always be outspoken for animals, however, when we speak out in this way, we automatically associate ourselves (whether or not we intend to) with a drastically different position. This position is that the use of animals is perfectly acceptable, as long as they aren’t on “this” list or as long as they aren’t in an arbitrary “protected” category. Again, this doesn’t mean we should turn our backs on the issue. To the contrary, news stories like these provide a perfect opportunity to reach out to the public, already sensitized to the issue, to encourage them to extend their thinking. That’s exactly what the purpose of this article is. That’s exactly the reason why a small group of animal people were saying “Concerned about Vick’s dogs? What about the animals on your plate?”
