I’ve just seen some pictures I can never unsee. They’re from a dog-eating festival in Yulin, China.
The festival doesn’t just involve eating dogs. It involves doing some horribly cruel things to the dogs before eating them.
If you’re a dog lover, or a dog liker, or even a dog tolerator, don’t follow this link.
Trust me.
But it struck me. Here I was, finishing up a bowl of homemade beef stew, and being outraged about the dog-eating festival. Feeling sympathy for one slaughtered animal while gobbling down another slaughtered animal. Yes. I fall into that very large group of people that cares about animals, but not enough to be vegetarian or vegan. I think the official term is “hypocrites”.
I’m sure the cow I just ate in my stew was not boiled alive like the dogs in Yulin. But, let’s face it, it died for someone’s dinner, just the same. If you’re alone in a room with a murderer, you would hope they wouldn’t torture you before killing you. But what you’d really like, if you had the choice, is not to be killed at all. And what kind of life did that cow have, anyway? Or the pig that went into my ham sandwich yesterday? Or the chicken that went so nicely with my chips and coleslaw last week?
We all have vague images of farms that come straight out of kids’ picture books. Cows munching at the grass in green fields. Pigs rolling in mud. Chickens clucking as they peck contentedly in barnyards. We know that’s not the reality, of course. But we probably haven’t done a lot of googling to find out exactly what the reality is. It’s easier not to know, isn’t it? Easier to watch another cat video. But I thought, if I could look at the pictures of the Yulin festival, I could face finding out a bit about factory farming in Australia.
The truth is, most of the pigs and chickens we eat in Australia are factory farmed. Most of them will never see the sun or feel the earth under their feet.
According to animal protection institute Voiceless, pregnant pigs are often kept in sow stalls so small that the pigs can’t even turn around. Chickens can be kept 20 to a square metre, which means their personal space is about as big as an A4 piece of paper.
Top Comments
Have any of the people who believe animals in Australia have great lives actually visited factory farming locations? I strongly doubt it. However, the fact we eat cows, chickens and pigs in Australia doesn't mean it's okay to treat dogs this way in China and elsewhere. For some of us, the whole thing is cruel and wrong. If you're hungry there are plenty of alternatives to taking something's life and forcing it into a short, horror story of a life.
Thank you.
Thank you for thinking, looking, considering and being honest with yourself.
Thank you.