What's the Difference?

You will see this picture and you will be horrified. That is, if you like dogs at all. If you like to eat dogs, maybe you'll just feel a twinge of guilt for seeing them treated in this manner...I mean, shouldn't they be treated nicely before they are unnecessary killed for nothing more than "I Like Eating Them"?

Don't worry, these dogs - destined for Chinese slaughterhouses - are alive. They were saved because a dog rescue in China paid money to save them. Not because the right thing is to not eat them in the first place.

I live in a country that slaughters - for no other reason than taste - 10,000,000,000 land animals every year. TEN BILLION. Yet when Americans (or citizens of countries that perceive dogs = companions) see pictures like this, they are shocked and horrified. At the very next meal, though, they may sit down and eat the flesh of an animal who lived like this:

Pregnant pigs are housed in cages so small they cannot turn around. Their babies are stripped from them at 2-3 weeks of age (too soon!) and their piglets live in concrete pens that offer them about as much space as this female pig has in a cage.

I do not need the muscle and flesh of a dog to survive. I do not need to eat the muscle and flesh of a pig to survive. Them be the facts. I'm going to guess that you don't need dog flesh or pig flesh to survive, either.

Yet how can we rationalize away the suffering of a pig who is smarter, cleaner, just as social and engaging as a dog? How can we eat her and not eat a dog? That's rhetorical. But if you think about long enough, I hope you'll rethink your own dietary choices. Because at the end of the day? That caged dog wants to live as much as that caged pig...and none of us need to slaughter them to survive.