In the Danger Zone

by Stefan Gates

'Well, you're a dog expert,' I proffer, to no avail.

  'It's up to them.'

  Christ alive, why won't anyone in this country express outrage at some level?

  I leave Petian Castle without a clear answer – no one seems to care too much what happens to the dogmeat industry and its unhappy dogs. It's as if they see pets as a different species compared to animals raised for food, despite the fact that they look exactly the same, wag similar tails and bark like each other.

  Facing the Music

  It's my last day here so I invite all the stalker Korean TV crews to join me at Chin's restaurant to see if I can bear to eat dog. I arrive at the restaurant at dusk and I can see lots of people and camera kit inside. I'm nervous, not so much because of the attention, but because I find it uncomfortable that such a delicate personal decision has to be played out in front of the world's media.

  My problem is this: I've seen the terrible conditions that some dogs are raised in, and that's enough to make me hate the whole idea. But Koreans eat 1-3 million dogs every year. It's a huge industry that, despite some ham-fisted attempts by the government to ignore its existence, isn't going to go away. So surely the only way to improve things is to enforce proper animal welfare standards – standards like those of Mr Yong Bok Chin.

  And there's the dilemma: Chin's dogs – the dogs that are on the menu today – were raised in decent conditions, and if I want to encourage anything, it's for people to eat dog that's been raised like these.

  Just before entering I call my wife Georgia for moral support, but there's little forthcoming.

  'You know what I think. You wouldn't catch me eating a dog.'

  Is that all?

  'Well, if you want to explain to your daughters that you've been away eating dogs . . .'

  I'm on my own, which is the way it ought to be.

  The restaurant is packed with punters who want to watch me eat. One of them reveals the real reason why it's so popular with the guys: 'If you eat it, your energy surges, it gives you a real boost. You really feel the power. If you're low, it gives you energy and helps you to work more enthusiastically and cuddle your wife better. You can go for it twice instead of once!'

  His wife bursts into squeals of laughter and enthusiastically agrees, 'He's much better after a plate of dog!'

  I'm still confused when I sit cross-legged next to Chin. The cameras line up in front of me and I hope for some lightning bolt that will resolve my conundrum, but none is forthcoming. A bowl of dog stew is laid in front of me, along with a similar bowl of chicken stew.

  I stare at the bowls of stew and run over the events of the last fortnight in my head, and the one niggling thing that I can't resolve is the sight of those dogs living in God-awful conditions next to a cattle farm whose animals were so well-cared for.

  I unpack my thoughts on camera: 'I think that eating dog is fine in principle. And I think that Mr Chin is a decent farmer who cares for his animals well, and if this was just about his dogs, I'd be happy to eat it. But in front of all these cameras, everything that I do has a wider meaning. If I eat it, I'll be approving an unregulated industry that is free to do what it wants to dogs, and it's got to change. And you can't drive this industry underground. A million and a half dogs are eaten each year in an illegal industry already. So you aren't going to stop it, you're just going to cause more and more suffering for more and more animals. Sorry, mate, but I'm not going to eat it.'

  There is an audible gasp from around the room. I promise Chin that if the dogmeat industry does get regulated and conditions improve I'd be happy to return and eat dog with him. He is desperately disappointed, but he seems to understand.

  • • • • •

  The next day, as I wait for my plane, I see the story played out on Korean national TV. They use a photo of me with an outsized head, and track my journey around Korea, reducing it to a kind of cartoon – it is all quite jolly and it seems that although they scorn my refusal to eat dog, they are relieved that I hadn't embarrassed anyone. God forbid.

  The moral turpitude and false sincerity here has drained me. I feel an enormous sense of relief that I'm heading off to a simpler place next: the Arctic, where subsistence hunting and extreme weather must, admittedly, be physically difficult, but I hope they make the morality and psychology of food infinitely, deliciously simpler.

  PS

  Before the series was broadcast on the BBC, I appeared on Richard & Judy to talk about it. They were very nice and showed lots of clips of the show. The next day I got this email (not from Richard or Judy, I hasten to add):

  'I think you are a fucking bastard for going over there and taking part in it. I hope you and whatever family you have die a fucking rotten slow and painful death because you would deserve every second of it.

  My sister is 12 years old and that advert [sic] is something she will remember for the rest of her life you cunt-faced shit. Fucking drop dead now, God I'll be wishing and praying for you to drop fucking dead.'

  IGLOOLIK,

  ARCTIC CANADA

  Walrus and Pizzas

  CANADA

  POPULATION: 33 million

  PERCENTAGE LIVING ON LESS THAN $2 A DAY: 16%

  UNDP HUMAN DEVELOPMENT INDEX: 6/177

  CORRUPTION PERCEPTIONS INDEX POSITION: 14/163

  GDP (NOMINAL) PER CAPITA: $38,951 (14/179)

  FOOD AID RECIPIENTS: n/a

  IGLOOLIK

  POPULATION: 1,500

  GLOBAL INUIT POPULATION: 150,000

  UNEMPLOYMENT IN IGLOOLIK: approx 50%

  UNEMPLOYMENT IN CANADA: 6.1%

  AVERAGE AGE IN NUNAVUT: 22.1 years

  It's 4 a.m. I'm sitting, wide awake from jet lag here in Room I of the Tujormivik Inn, an isolated, snow-bound hotel in a strange land of desolate beauty. I've just snuck across the freezing cold corridor to the freezing cold bathroom where I found, sitting atop the loo, a paperback copy of The Shining. For any of you who were asleep during the 1980s, The Shining is a story of gruesome horror, blood-splattering death and spiralling insanity set in . . . an isolated, snow-bound hotel in a strange land of desolate beauty. As I lie awake, I wonder if this is a sign that our trip will descend into a doom-laden, Stephen King-style nightmare, and it's a long time before I eventually fall into a troubled sleep.

  When I wake, I look out of the window. Oh Christ! Two questions: 1. What am I doing here? 2. How soon can I go home? This is Igloolik, an Inuit village in northern Canada, deep inside the frozen tundra of the Arctic Circle. It's very, very bleak: the land is ice-bound for much of the year, it supports almost no vegetation whatsoever and is as flat as a pancake. Temperatures drop to around -65°C in the depths of winter. The houses all look like Portakabins and are inhabited by an ancient people whose way of life is being ripped apart by the modern world. Worst of all, there's no booze. And if you're hoping to hear of a proud indigenous community coping with it all, you'll be disappointed. This is a fractured society that's struggling – and broadly failing – to cope with the pressures of the modern world: crime is high, domestic abuse rife, a 10 p.m. curfew has to be enforced to stop youths running amok, and a local paedophile was only recently locked up, having terrorized the kids of the town for years.

  That said, things are looking up: Igloolik has just celebrated its first year with no suicides. This might seem little cheer to a town of only 1,300 people, but with joy in short supply around here, it'll have to do.

  And why have I come to this godforsaken place? Simple: these people hunt to eat, following a way of life that has existed for thousands of years. But it's being turned upside down by global warming, the effects of which are five times more devastating here in the Arctic than in the UK. They don't hunt in your posh gents' pheasant-bagging, shooting party way, but as part of a real, dangerous, visceral and vital way of life. None of it is pretty: they hunt ringed seal, walrus, beluga and bowhead whale, caribou and the odd fish, and it's bloody and rampantly carnivorous and it'll upset your kids if they see it (it certainly upset m
ine). But vitally, the environment in which they hunt is a clear and tragic example of the human consequences of global warming, dramatically changing their way of life year on year. The Inuit who live here are the canaries in the global warming coalmine, and the rapid changes they have to make in their lives every year are a pretty good indication of the changes that will affect all of us sooner or later.

  • • • • •

  Here's a basic one-minute guide to the Inuit:

  Around 150,000 Inuit live in the Arctic areas of Canada, Alaska, Greenland and Russia. Don't call them Eskimos because they just don't like it, right? They are traditionally highly carnivorous, with meat from marine mammals, fish and caribou making up a large part of their diet in a land of little vegetation. The traditional Inuit belief system is animist – all things have a form of spirit, which may be invoked by the shaman. They are said to have inhabited the Arctic for 4,500 years, living a precarious life as itinerant hunters and fishermen.

  The arrival of European whalers and fishermen en masse in the early 1800s brought disease and social disruption and had a disastrous effect, but, in truth, nobody really seemed to care much about the Inuit until the cold war, when the Arctic suddenly became strategically important, and both the USA and USSR eyed it as unclaimed territory and even a possible northern crossing. Canada protested, but they couldn't really claim sovereignty over something that they didn't administer, so they began to take a belated interest in helping the Inuit.

  It's easy to be sentimental about the Inuit and their plight but they, like most nations and peoples around the world, have a dark side to their history. Their past is full of bloody, vengeance-based traditional justice systems, raiding their neighbours, vicious inter-clan feuding and hostility to outsiders. It's not surprising, seeing as they survive so precariously, but still. Infanticide used to be relatively common, especially amongst the Copper Inuit, and it was usually female babies who were abandoned, causing a general population problem. The Inuit had to be tough to survive hostile places.

  State intervention has been a mixed blessing: modern medical care helped significantly to raise the birth rate, but meant that traditional hunting and fishing could no longer support the increased population. Social security, housing and education brought the Inuit together into structured and static communities, but their culture was based on self-sufficient nomadic hunting and fishing, traditional skills and ancient wisdom. Self-sufficiency has been replaced by reliance on the state, and there is a general frustration that they are now a small, relatively-impoverished minority, whose traditional skills, wisdom and values are of little value to the modern world.

  The Canadian Inuit suffer extremely high levels of suicide (six times the national average, and concentrated amongst younger men), substance abuse, unemployment and crime.

  On a more optimistic note, Inuit arts are becoming very popular around the world and tourism, mining and real estate might offer economic potential.

  • • • • •

  I take a walk on the beach, and despite the fact that it's well into winter, the sea hasn't started to freeze over. The beach is covered in snow and the ground is frozen hard, but the sea is ice-free – other than the first few metres of slush, which looks like a huge gin and tonic. If only. It shouldn't be like this in October, and the Inuit are eagerly awaiting the long-overdue, proper winter. When it does finally arrive, the sea around Igloolik will freeze over completely and 24-hour darkness will set in. This has limited appeal to my unenlightened, temperate-zone mind, although the fact that lovemaking activity is thought to increase substantially must be nice.

  I meet my guides Harry, John, Conrad and Theo, who will be taking me hunting and showing me how modern Inuit live. They are cheery and confident blokes with a dry sense of humour, thick accents (especially John's, which sounds like a badly tuned two-stroke engine) and terrible teeth. Theo is clearly the guv'nor, a small, weathered guy who speaks good English, but looks me up and down like I'm a lily-livered townie who wouldn't last a minute without his help. He may have a point. We make plans to go hunting in a couple of days and return to our hotel.

  Back at Tujormivik Inn I taste one of the grimmest meals I've ever had the pleasure to subsequently throw away. It's an insult to a turkey sandwich (which is really saying something) made from yesterday's Thanksgiving turkey leftovers. Chunks of turkey lie cold and glutinous between two vast slabs of the whitest of white breads, and the whole thing is drowning in a slurry of floury and flavourless white sauce. A note tells me to slip it into the microwave. I scrape the meat from the sandwich and throw the rest away. I'll need the protein and I guess that food must be hard to find in the Arctic Circle, so I'm grateful nonetheless. I fantasize about a nice pinot noir to warm my soul, but only manage to upset myself.

  Beluga Whale Sashimi

  I wake to hear gossip in the hotel kitchen that beluga whales have been spotted near the harbour, so I drag on my huge, duvet-like clothes and hurry down to the beach.

  When I get there a beluga whale frenzy is going on and there's a sense of excitement in the air. Boats stuffed with entire families arrive back from the hunt, and throw huge hunks of whale into the shallow water, which runs red with blood and whale bits, mostly muqtuk, the rubbery skin and outer layer of fatty blubber, which they eat both raw and cooked.

  Word has spread around town that there's been a big catch, and a steady flow of friends and family begins to arrive with carrier bags to collect a slab of muqtuk to take home. It's a bloody but heart-warming scene as the catch is shared throughout the whole community. The more elderly Igloolikans seem particularly pleased.

  Danny, one of the younger hunters, explains how they found an adult and an infant beluga off the town harbour promontory early in the morning. They harpooned them then shot them with rifles. This is the whale-hunting season, the only time of the year when they migrate north past Igloolik and although there's international pressure to ban commercial whale-hunting, the Inuit have always maintained a right to hunt limited numbers for food.

  Beluga whales are heartbreakingly beautiful – a little bigger than most dolphins, with bulbous heads, and they are elegantly and disarmingly white. They are born a slate grey but grow whiter as they mature, and it's a beautiful, ghostly, diaphanous white. Danny offers to let me try beluga muqtuk. This may be bad news for my career, for my relationship with my little daughters and, of course, for my stomach because, like walrus, beluga can cause a particularly nasty parasitic disease called trichinosis if they're infected with the larvae of the trichina roundworm. I ask my new friend if he's ever suffered food poisoning, but he says no.

  OK, then, let's eat whale: Danny shows me how to cut off a piece of skin and cross-hatch it with my knife. When I bite into the skin it's incredibly tough: imagine ripping a piece of car tyre off with your bare teeth. At first it seems to taste of nothing at all, but then I recognize the slight fishiness of very fresh raw squid, but with a tough, rubbery texture. To be honest, I'm not sure if it's nice or not, and my teeth have great difficulty tearing through it – the Inuit must have terrible trouble as many of them have few if any teeth mainly due to their insatiable appetite for sugar. I chew hard but still can't seem to break down the skin. The fatty blubber, however, melts in my hands until they're covered in grease, leaving behind a strong gamy/fishy stench that stays with me for the whole day.

  I pick up a whole tail and roll it around in my arms. It's a very graphic piece of meat, with a small, dark red core, white blubber and tough skin. Danny tells me that although they love the fat and skin, they aren't keen on the taste of the meat so they leave it for the dogs.

  I thank him and take my leave, picking bits of raw whale from my teeth. I can't help it, but I feel pathetically sentimental about this beautiful creature and slightly guilty that I've eaten its flesh.

  On the way back to the hotel, I drop into a small prefab unit that houses the Igloolik Co-op, the oddest supermarket I've ever set foot in. It was founded to help the Inuit profit
from the fur trade, but it's now the source of pretty much everything the townspeople need. It has a down-at-heel feel and focuses on selling sweets, crisps, processed cheese, hot dogs (there are dozens of different brands, though the hot dogs themselves look identical) and, ironically, frozen food. Masses of frozen food. The entire left-hand side of the building is a wall of upright freezers packed with all manner of chips, potato shapes, pizzas and frozen burgers.

  The manager, John, is a Newfoundlander (known locally as a Ncwfie) and speaks with a curious mixture of broad Irish brogue and American twang that makes him sound like he's putting on a silly accent. John is conscientious but pragmatic. 'People want fast food rather than fresh food,' he says, as he proudly shows me his shelves of Doritos and biscuits, and he readily admits that his biggest sellers are the chips and hot dogs. But he has more to contend with than your average Co-op: crippling transportation costs.

  Everything fresh has to be sent by train to Churchill on the mainland, then flown from there to Igloolik, although there are also a couple of ships every year for long-life canned goods and non-food items. The cost of transporting this stuff is astronomical, and although some is subsidized by the government, everything is horrendously expensive. For example, basic fresh food such as potatoes, flour and apples (which nobody wants anyway), adds an extra £2 per 500 g in freight costs alone.

  John admits that food in his shop is expensive, wages around here aren't very high, and in any case, most of his customers are on income support. In fact, unemployment in Igloolik is running at 50 per cent, and most of the jobs here are the result of government projects. John shakes his head at the situation. 'It's difficult, very difficult.' In these circumstances, hunting large sea mammals isn't a cultural throwback – it's a vital way of supplementing the food supply.

  Arvirsiurvik

  I meet Theo, Harry, Conrad and John the next day to go on a hunting expedition. The boats are stranded halfway up the beach by the tide, which Theo implies is our fault, though I'm not entirely sure how he's worked that out. We all shove and lever the boats inch by inch down into the water.