The annual Yulin dog-eating festival has once again sparked worldwide outrage and controversy.
And as a vegan animal activist working fulltime to educate people about the rights of non-human
animals and environmental, social, and health impacts of dietary choice, I’m here to say…
...what's everyone so upset about?
Hi it’s Emily from bite size vegan and welcome to another vegan nugget. The Yulin dog meat
festival never fails to induce worldwide uproar, vigorous online petitioning, and powerful western disgust.
This is a bit of an impromptu video so I’m just going to share some of my thoughts and
perspectives, namely, that it’s very strange what a big fuss people make about this.
First, let’s go through the main objections about the festival and compare them to things that
we do every day, if you’re non-vegan, and seem to have no problem with, which is a form
of cognitive dissonance.
First, there’s the issue of stolen pets. As china doesn’t have dog farms, it’s
said that for the festival, people are actually stealing people’s family pets to take and eat.
Now of course it’s horrific to take a being away from those who love them, right?
And this certainly makes the festival barbaric.
Well, if you eat meat, dairy, and eggs, you’re participating in the same action. The dogs
have loving human families they are stolen from, but cows, pigs, chickens, sheep, etc.
all have loving families as well. They may not be of a species you can more readily identify
with, but they are no less important.
Mother pigs sing to their nursing babies, mother chickens are fiercely protective of
their chicks, cows have even been shown to have best friends. When you eat pig, cow,
chicken, lamb, or any animal’s flesh, you’re committing the same injustice as those who
are stealing family pets away for the festival.
The dairy industry, for one, is particularly horrifying in this respect as mother cows
have their children stolen from them after birth and sent to slaughter time after time
after time. It’s only by our social conditioning that we don’t see a jug of milk and sign
thousands of petitions to ban dairy as we do with Yulin. But the pain, the cruelty,
the heartbreak are the same.
Second objection, along with the pet theme, is that these dogs have names and identities.
They have personalities. They are intelligent and loving.
Well, research has repeatedly shown, though it’s a bit stupid to think we need research
for this, that animals respond to names but also they name their own children with distinctive
calls. A mother pig knows each of her piglets intimately. A mother hen will know if even
one chick strays. Mother cows form intense bonds with their babies.
And all of these bonds are destroyed by bacon, beef, chicken, ham, eggs, mutton, or whatever
we want to call it to ignore the reality.
Just because we haven’t names these animals ourselves or shared our homes with them, or
stayed around them long enough to learn their individual personality, doesn’t mean they don't have value.
Pigs are incredibly intelligent, far more so than dogs and even 3 year old human children
on some tests. Hell, chickens have even been shown to posis cognitive abilities beyond
young human children. We can’t hide behind the argument that they’re too dumb to know any better.
If you look at the terror in the eyes of these dogs being tortured and killed for this festival
and your heart breaks, then the only logical action for you to take is to be vegan.
Signing a petition may make some impact, who knows. But not eating animals?
That is going to make a difference, no question.
These beings deserve equal outrage on their behalf to what we globally afford dogs. We
have to wake up to the fact that a pig is a dog, is a rat. is a boy. Rooting for babe
during the movie and then going home to sign a petition to stop the Yulin dog festival while
chowing down on some bacon doesn’t make any sense.
The third objection is that these dogs weren’t raised on a farm to be killed- that was not
the intent of their life as it is with “food animals.” Well, being raised on a farm for
the express purpose of being killed doesn’t somehow justify your death. Murder is murder,
regardless of the location. If I had a woman impregnated for the sole purpose of raising that child
to kill it, does that make its death any more excusable? This may sound absurd, but this is what we’re talking about here.
Fourth objection is the brutal way in which these dogs are killed. Some say that the more
they suffer, the more luck one receives for consuming them, so they are often beaten to
death, or burned alive, or boiled alive.
Some people think that if they were raised on a farm then there would be rules and laws
in place to guarantee fair treatment. Well, from undercover footage and testimonies
of former farm workers, that just doesn’t hold up.
Pigs are very often alive when plunged into baths of scalding water. Cows make it alive
through to dismemberment on a regular basis. Workers are careless and speed is valued above
all else. These animals are often conscious when they are killed and even cut apart and
just because it happens in a big building with a corporate name and stainless steel
floors, instead of the back alleys of Yulin, doesn’t make it any more excusable.
And if you eat eggs, you’re having the male babies of layer hens thrown into a grinder alive.
These are day old babies, fluffy little yellow chicks that we adore on Easter, tossed
en masse alive, into grinders. Tell me how now. Where is their petition? Where is the
global outrage? Where is the disgust at eggs stacked in the supermarket?
And if you think humane, free-range, or cage-free guarantees anything, that’s another reality
to awaken to. There is no real regulation or even standard for such terms. For cage
free eggs the chickens are crammed into a shed on top of one another and if they have
“access to the outdoors” they can be called free-range. But access can be a small
open door screened over such that they can see outside but not actually go outside.
They are still living in disease and filth, but at least our conscious is clean.
So to my non-vegans. If your stomach turns at the idea of eating dog, if you cannot even
comprehend how anyone could be so barbaric and violent towards such loving, trusting
animals, if you are outraged and feel helpless to do anything about it but want with every
ounce of your being to save those poor dogs, then I say, welcome to how vegans feel every damn day.
Because the slaughter of 10,000 dogs is obviously horrific, but the fact that the slaughter
of trillions of other beings every single year goes without notice by those so incensed
about the Yulin festival- that is the real tragedy.
Now I could show you all manner of videos side-by-side of the way the dogs are killed
vs. the way cows, pigs, chicken, and other animals are killed here in our very “civilized”
western world. And I was going to do that because many times you won’t believe it
until you see it, though you still may say it’s an isolated incident.
And I do value graphic footage because these animals deserve to have their story told and
the horrors committed against them exposed. But instead I want you to really think about this.
Visualize those dogs in those cages, stolen from their loving families, terrified,
smelling the death and fear around them and replace them with pigs. Does your emotional
reaction change? What if you replace them with chickens? Do you relax a bit? Does the
outrage and disgust lessen?
If it does, I would ask you to look at that. Better yet, when you pass a farm or if you’re
in the meat section of the grocery store or looking at eggs, replace those products with
the flesh of someone’s dog, or your dog, or cat. How does that change how you approach
what you eat? Because you have to remember: what's on your plate had a name and a family.
The division we make between species is entirely arbitrary and Asians consuming dogs are no
worse than Americans consuming pigs or Australians consuming chickens. They are all equally horrific.
They are all lives cut short. They are all abused, tortured, and killed. And they all
have names and families who love them.
We should be outraged about the consumption of dogs but we should be equally outraged
about the consumption of all beings. Species doesn’t dictate ethics.
I hope that this has been helpful. Please share this video around to help others make
the connection. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter in the comments below. If you
liked this video, be sure to give it a thumbs up and if you want to help support bite size
vegan, be sure to check out the support links in the description below or the nugget army icon or the link in the sidebar.
Now go live vegan, wake up to cognitive dissonance, and I’ll see you soon.
It's okay, I stopped talking about it.
I stopped talking about it.
I'm sorry that had to happen.
Which done...we're done talking about the unspeakable.
Let's get you some dinner.