The price of rat meat has tripled in Cambodia as inflation has pushed other kinds of meat out of reach of the poor. There's nothing inherently awful about eating rats, as long as they're cooked--I've eaten squirrel and possum, and they're quite tasty. But as Jared Diamond points out in Collapse, the minute societies have access to large-animal protein, they generally stop eating things like mice and bugs. This is probably because they are a lot of work for a little protein, but they acquire the disgust attached to the food of desperation. People who eat rats are people close enough to the verge of starvation to overcome that disgust.
Cambodia is suffering from two broad problems plaguing Asia. Almost all of the governments are deliberately inflating their currencies in order to keep them cheap against the dollar and thus stimulate exports. That rapid (double-digit) inflation is pushing many goods out of reach of the poor.
The other problem is that China is getting rich. Over the long run, this will be a great thing for everyone. In the short term, however, richer Chinese are competing for things like meat and rice in local markets. Several Asian nations have banned the export of rice in order to counteract that pressure, but this is stopgap at best--in the short run, you may may rice cheaper locally, but in the long run, you've hurt local farmers, and the rice will probably leak across the border anyway. Vietnam is basically built like a noodle--few farmers are too far from the border to bring their crop somewhere else.
Copyright © 2009 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Years ago I read that as far as anthropologists can determine, no human culture anywhere in the world has ever eaten rat unless there are no alternatives.
One question that remains is why the Cambodians don't adopt a vegetarian diet if no meat other than rat is readily available. Are they that wedded to the practice of eating meat, any meat, or are substitute foods themselves scarce?
I don't think you understand -- we had to save the mortgage industry here in America! That's why the Fed lowered interest rates. That the move stoked inflation here and around the world was of little consequence. Banks were too big to fail, and homeowners needed to be protected, doncha know.
Let them eat rats. If they can afford it. There's an election coming up.
Is there really a problem with using a short-term solution to solve a short-term problem?
I might argue with it on other terms (like how banning rice exports hurts local rice farmers, now and forever)
Corrected this for you:
"I've eaten squirrel and possum, and..." now I'm a vegan.
Are they that wedded to the practice of eating meat, any meat, or are substitute foods themselves scarce?
Everybody needs a source of protein, without it you have troubles functioning. I would guess that rat meat is one of the only sources of protein for them. In the absence of protein your body will eat just about anything to get it. If by wedded to the practice you mean "required for survival" then I guess they are.
Is there really a problem with using a short-term solution to solve a short-term problem?
To a first order of approximation, goverment programs never end.
Well, but reasonably well-off South Americans eat guinea pig. And Europeans pay rather a lot to eat quail, which looks to me like something where the work-in-to-meat-out ratio is quite large.
Literally over ten billion people either starve to death or are forced to eat rats because of Dumbya's malfeasance, and not one Repiglican is man enough to apologize for it.
I never misuse "literally."
Re: One question that remains is why the Cambodians don't adopt a vegetarian diet if no meat other than rat is readily available.
Has any human culture ever adopted a wholly vegetarian diet? Sure, you can find ascetic (often religious) minorities that have done this, but I don't think you can find a single culture that has ever eliminated animal protein entirely from its diet. Animals are by far the most efficient source of protein for human beings, and we evolved to include some animal protein in our diet. Not anywhere near as much as we Westerners eat, but not zero either.
Re: Literally over ten billion people either starve to death or are forced to eat rats because of Dumbya's malfeasance
Oh good grief, what are you going to blame Bush for next? A supernova in a galaxy far, far away? The extinction of the dinosaurs? Believe it not, most of the world's problems have nothing to do with Bush-- or even with America. Yes, Bush turns everything he touches to dung, but the rest of the world is adept at screwing things up too. Snafus were not invented in America. By the way, there are only six billion people on Earth right now, and best estimates place about 300 million of them in extreme poverty, in true danger of stavation-- if ten billion people are starving to death then I assume you must be counting a number of parallel universes. Is Bush even president in those other realities? I'd like to think he's a unique flub, not to be found in any other version of our world.
You're don't know much, Jonf, and don't pretend you despise Dumbya, because it's clear from your post that you don't really. Simpering toadies like you are the reason the Bushpigs have lasted as long as they did.
An obvious impostor writes: "You're don't know much, Jonf..."
I never leave blatant error in my posts like the 4:02 poster did.
I forgot to add, however, that I more or less agree with the sentiment of the 4:02 poster. The impostors have gotten a bit stupid lately, probably because in their attempt to parody me, they wind up saying things that are perfectly reasonable, and that anyone other than the most mindless Repiglican Apparatchik would agree with. I almost feel like I don't even need to bother pointing out who the impostors are.
Guess you thought you were clever, chuckles. How clever can you be if you just amplify my voice?
I know people who spend World War II in the German Occupied parts of Europe. Unanimously agree that there is no way to make rat taste good. I suppose the rats you can catch in Paris are a bit gamier than the ones out in the country...
It's been a while since I took Ec 10, but how close is rat meat to being a Giffen good?
Re: You're don't know much, Jonf, and don't pretend you despise Dumbya, because it's clear from your post that you don't really.
Last I checked Bush is president of the US, not Cambodia-- and Indochina is one place the US has not invaded in a while. You could make a case I suppose that the US bears some responsibility for the mess that Cambodia is today due to our policies there in the Vietnam years. But that would be an indictment of Nixon, Kissinger et al not Bush. All in all though, I prefer to see blame placed as close to the trouble as possible: in this case with Cambodia's current and recently past leadership. If the country is a mess surely these folks have something to do with it? And this knee-jerk blame-America-First taurine byproduct is as absurd as the Amerika-Uber-Alles attitude on the right. America is neither the world's savior nor its universal villain. Humankind is a pack of fools pretty much everywhere and, as history amply shows, human beings are very good at scrweing themselves without any outside assistance at all.
Are the MoeLarryAndJesus posts a satire?
Or are either of the two MoeLarryAndJesuses are aware that their posts are satire?
"Several Asian nations have banned the export of rice in order to counteract that pressure, but this is stopgap at best--in the short run, you may may rice cheaper locally, but in the long run, you've hurt local farmers, and the rice will probably leak across the border anyway. Vietnam is basically built like a noodle--few farmers are too far from the border to bring their crop somewhere else." -- MM
This isn't really how it works for rice farmers in Vietnam. The really big production is in the Mekong Delta (80%) and up north in the Red River delta (20%). The Mekong Delta is close to Cambodia, but Cambodians are poorer than Vietnamese so it's not much of an export market. The Red River delta isn't far from China but the overland and rail transit is very poor. Pretty much all the rice goes out through the ports, and when exports are banned, the amount that "leaks out" to Cambodia or China is so infinitesimal in comparison to the amounts that would go out through big export contracts that it's not really relevant. You're talking about export contracts for millions of tons a year versus smuggling of maybe a few thousand tons. One the Vietnamese government does have is the capacity to exert control over the physical (as opposed to monetary) economy.
>>Has any human culture ever adopted a wholly vegetarian diet?
Umm, loads of Hindus (differs by caste) and all practicing Jains. Granted, this is only for a certain value of "vegetarian". Most Indians, no matter how "pure vegetarian" they are, could not do without milk products. Thats still about 310 million people who don't eat any meat.