"I would never eat anything with a face," my friend Jamie says. "Except fish, I guess. But they have ugly faces."
Welcome to ethics, circa 2016. We all have our personal lines in the sand, our limits to acceptable behaviour (and animal consumption). For Jamie, that limit is the existence of a face. Or at least, a cute face. That's why she's a "pescatarian", or a vegetarian who allows herself to eat seafood as well.
That's her line in the sand, and it's a relatively simple one to follow. You'll probably be familiar with many other people's lines as well. They can run across the full spectrum: the vegans who won't consume any animal products; the vegetarians who don't touch meat; the people who avoid red meat, or who only eat raw foods, or who only consume organic, free-range meats, or who won't even class something as a meal unless it features a giant slab of animal in the middle.
At home, it's easy enough for people to draw their ethical lines and to stay on the acceptable side of them. You can cook your own food at home, or eat with friends who feel the same way, or go to restaurants you know will cater for your particular desires. Simple.
It's when you travel, however, that things become difficult. So difficult, in fact, that you'll be encouraged to cross your ethical line over and over again, and you'll be forced to question whether refusing to budge really is the right, and polite, thing to do.
There's an element of cultural superiority involved in sticking to your dietary preferences when you travel. Veganism, for instance, is one of those "stuff white people do" choices. It's a luxury of the privileged to be able to turn down animal products. Are you really going to go to, say, Kenya, and refuse the meal you're served because its consumption, though highly-prized by locals, is inherently wrong to you?
Different cultures have different values. If you insist yours is correct, that seems problematic to me.
Vegans and vegetarians, however, are at least consistent. No animal products, full stop. It's the meat eaters who can be surprisingly contradictory.
Would you eat dog meat if you were served it in China? How do you feel about the consumption of goat meat, or camel, or horse? Or eating puffins? Would you dine on whale meat?
If your answer to any of these questions is "no", then why not? Chances are you're thinking it's because they're cute animals that aren't for eating, or they're overly intelligent, or they're just out of bounds and the people who do eat them have got something wrong.
But these are cultural distinctions. The vast bulk of the 1.3 billion people in India, for instance, would be horrified at the idea of us eating beef. Cows are sacred in their country. The fact we breed and slaughter them for food is inherently wrong.
Fortunately, however, we don't end up with Indians staging demonstrations at Australian cattle stations in the same way an American protester attempted to shut down a dog-meat-eating festival in China a few weeks ago. I'm not saying I support the eating of dog meat – this is where my "cute face" line is drawn – but there's an air of cultural superiority involved in travelling to someone else's country and telling them that what they're doing is wrong.
So what do you do, as a traveller? How do you react when that plate of horse or bacon or even cheese is lovingly prepared and placed in front of you, when you're encouraged to cross your line?
Do you quietly refuse and just try to move on? Do you make a fuss and tell people that what they're doing is wrong? Or do you ignore your ethical boundaries and just eat it in the name of adventure and acceptance of other people's ways?
Personally, I've always gone with the latter. Who am I to tell people they're wrong? Who am I to say that it's OK to eat a sheep, but not OK to dine on a horse? What makes me so sure that eating a shark is 100 per cent fine, but eating a whale is the worst thing a human can possibly do?
If it's not endangered, then it's a hard thing to argue (unless you're a vegan).
I don't go seeking these experiences out; it's not a thrill. But it is part of travel, and part of accepting the saying that in other countries "it's not wrong, it's different". Even for things with cute faces.
