‘Cultural Differences’ and Food

The “Cultural Differences” editorial (March 20) was an abstractionist exercise in strange thinking. If the courts can have jurisdiction over such culturally diverse activities as chicken fights, bullfights, and shooting of firecrackers and guns on any particular new year, they certainly should be able to put a stop to what most Westerners consider to be a most detestable practice: the killing of dogs and cats and other companion animals for food.

The judge in this particular case didn’t wish to make any new law--and got around the problem by redefining the case in such a way as to make it virtually a legal nonentity. Whether this was sensible is moot.

Does the public really have to wait until a special law is enacted for proper handling of future cases of this kind? Is the local animal shelter just a form of supermarket for Cambodians and others?

GEORGE H. KIRKMAN

Los Angeles