It’s already started. The notorious Yulin Dog Meat Festival, which takes place in southern China, is underway. The “festival” is not a celebration of dogs; it is a celebration of dog meat.
Beagles, golden retrievers, cocker spaniels, collies, chows, muts, you name it, are often stolen from people’s yards and the streets and violently beaten to death for human consumption.
The anti-Chinese racism is underway as well – much of it from passionate dog lovers. Horrified by the practices in Yulin, activists have lashed out at China, perhaps without realizing that only 8 percent of Chinese consume dog meat. Do we forget that 98 percent of Americans consume cows, chicken, fishes, goats and pigs?
Pigs, dogs — are they really so different?
People who live with pigs understand they are not. All animals feel pain, all animals love their young, all animals desire freedom of movement. If animals didn’t feel these emotions and desires, how would they survive?
Animals regarded as mere things or as cogs in a machine in this country suffer – the same as the dogs of China. Yet do you see Americans taking to the streets to protest this violence? Not often. But recently in China over one hundred thousand people came out to protest the dog trade and some animal rights groups based in the United States have joined them asking the government of China to stop this horror. So far, Chinese officials haven’t budged.
It’s not so hard to understand the reluctance. What if millions of Chinese sent petitions calling on the American government to stop the production and consumption of animal products? Would Americans suddenly shut down butcher counters, restaurants and animal farms? Absolutely not.
I would suggest that the American reaction to some Chinese eating dogs smacks of colonialism. Americans and Europeans arrive to save the day and stop the barbarism of the “developing nations.”
How easy it is to point a finger at others and fail to see our own complicity.
The United States kills some 9 billion land animals a year. Each American eats, on average, 270 lbs. of meat per year. Each Chinese person eats about 130 pounds a year. Yet we sit on our couches watching ABC’s recent episode of “Nightline” recoiling in horror at the cruel exploitation of dogs in China.
How helpful it would have been if the producers of the show had also, at the very least, noted the violence, suffering and anguish inherent in our own system of animal agriculture? While the horrors of the dog meat trade are indisputable, true change must start with an unsparing assessment of our own behavior.
True understanding must start with the realization that all nonhuman animals are deeply connected to human animals. Scientists have even shown that rats have empathy and will forgo food to help another rat.When will us humans achieve that same level of compassion?
As the noted animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) proclaims, “It’s not food, it’s violence.”
— A Vicious Vegan blog post —
This is so pertinent and so well written. Speciesism – rampant. OMG – when you put it in percentages it is SHOCKING how we are in America. Pointing fingers at the dog eaters, when they have only 8% eating dog and we have 98% eating pigs, cows, chickens, baby lambs, baby cows etc. I shudder at and become so sad at how Far REMOVED our society actually is from consciousness. Consciousness of self action and its consequence just isn’t there. Consciousness is intentionally quashed at every turn of the TV dial or Big Agro ad or commercial. Complicity with Big Agro — ignoring the intentional disregard for the precious lives of beautiful animals and of All animals that are NOT PETS. is what society has always done and continues to do. What society has deemed ‘pets’ continue to be loved and protected while those called ‘meat’ that are every bit as sweet, dear, lovely but terrified and full of fear and suffering at their slaughter and the brutality that leads them there andtakes them to their end are looked upon with contempt and seen as just ‘meat’. Society is brainwashed and sleeping through the brainwashing as health is compromised and our planet is destroyed beginning with – the rainforest – ‘being ripped down at the rate of 1 acre/second’ Yes – that is at the rate of ONE ACRE PER SECOND – merely to put food for cows, or put cows – all just so people can have their steak. That is exactly that – trading the rainforest (trading our planet) for animal food consumption. There is no such thing as having steak and eating it too here. This is Planetary annihilation – for Taste. This supposed humane society laughs at pigs (more intelligent animal than the dog) and calls them fat – refers to ‘chicken brains’ – humiliates the animals that we CALL food — (they really are commodified beings that have been bred after a rape) maintaining the gross profits for big agro while destroying our health and our home. These choices are keeping society unconscious and keeping the industry going. It has been said that our economy is ‘Sitting on the Backs of Animals’ . It is the poor animals that are holding it up (through their deaths) as we continue to buy into the brainwashing that says we need protein. Somehow animals do get their revenge as the protein kills the human (we need FAR LESS protein than Big Agro’s promotions say) . The people continue to participate in the same old meat habits as health deteriorates and diseases come on board from eating animal flesh and secretions, and the planet is destroyed. in one dumbed-down societal package. The rainforest. I must repeat – that is ‘The Rainforest’ IS being ripped down to put cows there for human consumption – or for feed. Rainforest = lungs of the planet. People don’t research anything – just buy into big Agro’s BS and manipulated (for Big Agro’s benefit) food charts. Please do watch the documentary ‘Cowspiracy’ and read WIll Tuttle’sbook ‘The World Peace Diet’ and Learn what is really happening with the 98% of brainwashed believers in society’s n o r ms.