The difference is, in the Western world, we don’t bludgeon our livestock into a slow and painful death with blunt objects, nor do we butcher our livestock while it’s still alive and conscious because we know that’s a mentally sick thing to do. Yet the Yulin dog meat butchers intentionally torture the dogs to death because “the suffering makes it tasty”. They’re causing these animals pain because they believe the adrenaline adds flavor, which doesn’t make any fucking sense either.
When we see cruel treatment of our livestock in the West, we get outraged too. Because we don’t want our food animals to suffer. We want them to be happy, and never see the end coming. That’s what a lot of us believe is merciful. When we see terrible and painful slaughtering, perhaps with a broken boltgun, we don’t think it’s acceptable. We think it’s an accident, or a mistake. We don’t think bludgeoning the living animal to death is “tenderizing”.
And we especially hate that some of these dogs are pets. You can raise a dog to be eaten. You can do it humanely, but stealing someone’s dog, cutting off its legs, then breaking its jaw with a hammer is FUCKED UP and wrong. It doesn’t matter who’s culture we’re talking about. It’s wrong to make animals suffer needlessly. It’s wrong to steal other people’s pets. And that’s what’s happening in the Yulin festival.
Develop some ethics first before you accuse us of cultural imperialism.
I’m not defending what’s happening, I’m condemning Western hypocrisy. Especially the hypocrisy of those who eat meat but decry dog- and cat-eating (or who privilege the loss of dogs over cats). Like this Orwellian phrase of yours:
slaughtered humanely
Killing and eating a sentient creature–or, worse, depending on someone else to do it for you–because you like the taste of its flesh is inexcusable when other food sources are readily available. There really is no moral justification for ending the life of a thinking, feeling being simply for the sake of convenience, which is the only reason that most Western meat eaters can hope to offer. This casual brutality only makes the hypocrisy of the West’s reaction to Yulin that much more poignant. Of course, in areas where meat is consumed for survival, or out of economic necessity, that is different. This is also a contradiction, but one that I am comfortable with.
The meat industry, like most industries, is rife with torture and abuse. This includes cramped conditions, the use of growth hormones, lack of stimulation for the animals, torturous slaughtering conditions, etc. Not to mention the habit in the U.S. especially of consuming only privileged parts of the animal and discarding the rest (like organs, heads, etc.), which is wasteful and snobbish. I suggest that you read more on the abuses of the meat industry, which are the norm, not the exception as you suggest. Just google meat industry abuses if you have the stomach for it.
Also, regarding some of what you reference about Yulin–e.g. “suffering makes it tasty” and tenderization–I haven’t seen this in news coverage of Yulin. I watched the videos, and for what it’s worth, it isn’t that different from what happens in a lot of meat factories, hence the proliferation of so-called “ag-gag” laws. What a lot of people are reacting negatively to–like the workers hitting the animals over the head before butchering them–is how most people who slaughter their own meat do it. Either that or they just go for the throat. But when the source of your meat is out of sight, out of mind, I suppose it’s easy to idealize.
Good points, and thank you for the thoughtful reply, I’ll admit I let my frustration with my presumption that you were espousing a view something like “the west is evil, so the Chinese are justified”. That was wrong of me. I got stuck in a loop of my own reasoning. The problem I have with Yulin specifically is because there are credible reports of pets being included in the festival, along with butchering of conscious animals. I’m fine with raising any animal for meat, generally speaking, as long as the animal is treated well and not abused while under human care. Does slaughter count as abuse? There’s strong arguments for that being the case, no matter how painless and unexpected it is to the animal.
I also admit that I do eat meat, even though it generally conflicts with my own philosophical positions (depending on how I decide to interpret them), but not without a level of mitigation. I shop at a farmer’s market. I’ve been to the farms, and I’ve seen how the cattle live, and how they’re dispatched and am satisfied that they have the best lives food animals can have. I’ve also hunted, and can say without a doubt that the animals I’ve killed myself suffered vastly worse than the animals coming from the farms I buy from. The animals I’ve killed suffered when I shot them, and continued to live their last minutes in immense fear and pain until I found them, and dispatched them. It’s not something I do anymore. Compared with a captive bolt gun to the head, the killing I’ve done is gruesome and merciless, and I’m not able to justify it.
I can’t spend much time every day on food, and creating a nutritionally complete diet for myself while excluding meat would be more expensive and time consuming than I really can handle. The farm visits I did are essentially an investment of time and care so that I can have a mostly clear conscience now. I know that the vast majority of beef comes from animals that did not live good lives because of us.
There certainly are numerous problems with commercial ranching that we need to address, and I’ll spare listing them out here. Suffice it to say, I’m not happy about them either.
Again, thanks for your thoughtful and measured response. I let myself respond to you angrily, and that wasn’t warranted.
The attendance at the local BBQ fundraiser to raise awareness of this issue was a big success.
Plus, Soylent Pets.
Don’t just bury your pets when the die, make them a part of you.
Hypocritical would be me thinking a dog should not be eaten as it would be morally reprehensible and then turning around and being OK with other people killing and eating it just because they don’t share my ethics or standards.
However, if you want to be pedantic, I would say that I am not being hypocritical since they are killing an animal that has shown me love, affection, and fair play and I am applying my standards consistently for others and myself. But, you may notice how I said “I deem”. See, that’s to help you understand that this is my point of view and not some objective standard.
Your perceptions do not count as my expression. A thing can be morally reprehensible without me having to express outrage.
