Stay informed with FP’s news and analysis as the United States prepares to vote.
The dinner table unites and divides, especially the question of what we eat and how we eat it. It is therefore not surprising that politicians frequently use food as a wedge issue to push their ideological agendas and define who belongs in a group and who doesn’t.
The recent political firestorm ignited by former U.S. President Donald Trump’s claim during a presidential debate that “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats,” has upended life in the small Ohio town—especially for its Haitian migrant population. The newly arrived refugees have been accused of eating their neighbors’ pets, leading to bomb threats to local schools and the suspension of in-person classes at nearby universities.
The repercussions of the event have been felt far beyond Springfield. On Sunday, vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance seemed to double down on the rumors he helped launch—telling CNN’s Dana Bash that “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
The baseless rumor Haitians immigrants eating pets in Springfield was promptly and summarily debunked by the town authorities. The soundbite was obviously meant to generate anxiety among voters who consider immigration a fundamental threat to the survival of the United States as we know it.
Whether it is truth or fiction does not matter. The Republican candidates’ divisive strategy has succeeded because of the symbolic meanings Americans—or any people—tend to attribute to certain foods that are seen to reflect and embody their identity as a community. These, in turn, generate strong emotional connections. Such reactions can easily bypass rational reflection. They feed instead off gut feelings. That’s why evidence negating Trump’s narrative may not actually change people’s knee-jerk reaction of revulsion.
The United States, due to its social and cultural diversity, is the perfect laboratory to test this kind of gastronativist messaging. Gastronativism can be activated not only via political affiliation, but also by class, religion, age, nationality, language and, of course, race and ethnicity. Throughout U.S. history, new immigrants have been accused of strange and disgusting culinary habits as a strategy to denigrate them and keep them at the margins of society.
German and Irish immigrants in the mid-19th century were identified with excessive consumption of beer and whisky, a habit that was considered with contempt in a society where anti-alcohol currents were strong and would, over time, originate legal arrangements such as prohibitionism.
A cartoon from the 1840s charges Irish and German immigrants with stealing elections, showing two men inside a keg of Irish whiskey and a barrel of German beer running off with a ballot box. Fotosearch/Getty Images
The Chinese that settled on the West Coast to work in mining and in railway construction were frequently scorned for their consumption of rice as a main staple, which was considered a sign of their lack of civilization. As most of them were men, at least at first, rice was also interpreted as the explanation for their assumed lack of virility. They were also accused of eating rats, as well serving cats and dogs in their restaurants.
When new waves of migrations from Southern and Eastern Europe invested in the United States, it was the time for garlic and its smell to be derided as an inevitable trait of Italians. This time, well intentioned social workers tried their best to wean the newcomers from their excessive use of vegetables and spices and to convince them to increase their consumption of dairy and meat, which the nutritional theories of the time considered as indispensable to provide the necessary strength for those engaged in physical labor. As new populations arrived, it was their turn to see their food and culinary traditions disparaged as clear marks of their cultural and social inferiority.
The real issue, of course, was always who the “real Americans” were. And the specter of Black migrants eating pets has proved to be even more potent than old scare stories about the Chinese, Italians, and Irish.
Neighborhood kids gather to sell Kool-Aid and chips in Springfield, Ohio, after students were kept home from school because of the bomb threats at their schools. Carolyn Kaster/AP
Springfield, Ohio, has in recent years experienced a massive influx of refugees escaping political instability in Haiti. The new arrivals, who are there legally, have eased the local businesses’ need for workers, from agriculture to industrial plants. However, they have also have strained the city’s financial and welfare resources, eliciting strong reactions among locals.
While Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, acknowledging the inevitable growing pains that come with a sudden population increase, has pointed out the role of Haitians in the economic resurgence of Springfield, his fellow Republican, Vance, has ignored the migrants’ contribution to the town’s comeback in favor of spreading wild and incendiary rumors. The fact that Trump and Vance doubled down on a lie points to its usefulness in stirring apprehension among their supporters, with the goal of bringing them to the polls.
Haitian refugees have escaped a country devastated by gang violence and political disarray. Many of them are likely to have experienced food insecurity, an issue that has plagued the island of Haiti for decades and has intensified due to the recent instability. Moreover, Haitians are Black, which itself constitutes a threat for certain segments of the white electorate who feel that their way of life and their privileges are being unfairly usurped by non-white newcomers.
It is easy to project on foreigners who come from a poor country a readiness to feed themselves in any way possible, including consuming animals that better-off people would not consider food.
Read More
Why Trump and Vance Are Scapegoating Haitians
The false accounts about eating pets in an Ohio town tap into a long history of racism and the obscuring of Haiti as a standard-bearer of freedom.
Haitians, in particular, are often portrayed as practitioners of voodoo, an Afro-Caribbean religion that syncretizes Catholic saints with West African deities. Born out of the culture of enslaved Africans in the New World as a form of resistance and transmission of their original culture, voodoo is connected with practices that include spiritual possession and, on occasion, animal sacrifices. American popular culture has played a central role in making these customs visible and, in many cases, terrifying—partly due to the connection between voodoo and zombie lore in films and horror literature.
The apprehension about the supposed religious practices of Haitians has deep roots in American culture. The anxiety about the mysterious habits of people of African descent has been a longstanding historical phenomenon in the United States since the colonial period. Such fears were intensified by the fact that enslaved people grew and cooked the food that their owners consumed.
Black women at times were tasked with breastfeeding white children and, in many cases, raising them. Against this background, tales about Black magic and juju abounded, indicating a clear ambivalence between the need for products and meals that came from Black hands and the awareness that those exploited in fields and kitchens may hold a grudge.
Given this history, the fake news regarding Haitians in Springfield is far from unexpected. It is through food that we distinguish “us” from “them.” And of course, “we” are inherently better than “them.”
Chefs at work in the kitchen of a restaurant in New York’s Chinatown circa 1940. Arthur Fellig)/International Center of Photography/Getty Images
Although Trump also mentioned wild geese being hunted, the fears about Haitian newcomers focused on pets, and in particular dogs. This particular phobia has a long lineage. Some native populations in North American did consume dog meat, causing disconcertment among European settlers. A 2018 regulation, the Dog and Cat Meat Trade Prohibition Act, was included in the Farm Bill, prohibiting the slaughtering of cats and dogs for human consumption, with the exception of native ceremonies.
Dog eating, however, was also a custom in China, South Korea, and the Philippines, among other countries, all of which have seen substantial migration toward the United States. The rapidly growing numbers of Asians in the United States intensified existing anti-Asian sentiments and racial intolerance, which increased during the coronavirus pandemic, attributed by many politicians to China. To emphasize its foreignness and blame Asians for it, Trump referred to the coronavirus as “kung flu.” The stereotype of the “dog-eating Asian” had a temporary resurgence, together with slurs and taunts that were often dug out from the past.
While dog eating is still legally practiced in some areas of China, it is in decline (Shenzhen became in 2020 the first city to outlaw it), and dog slaughtering as livestock has been banned in the Philippines since 1998, with an exception for rituals in indigenous communities and despite the persistence of some residual illegal consumption. In 2024, South Korea passed a law against the breeding and slaughter of dogs.
But reality does not seem to affect the circulation of food-related conspiracy theories, whose effectiveness is predicated on their capacity to strike emotional chords. The power of gastronativist fantasies grows precisely out of the centrality of eating in defining our identity and belonging. Facts end up losing relevance.
The incidents supposedly taking place in Springfield echo preexisting narratives with a long history, making the rumors feel familiar enough that lies begin to sound like truth. The emerging storyline of pet-eating Haitians responds to the needs of the politicians who peddle it while reflecting the ideological worldview of their followers. The victims—in this case a migrant community from a beleaguered country—are the collateral, calculated damage.