Culture and Lifestyle
Barking Mad: The West and the Yulin dog-eating festival

flickr/animalsasia
Food is one of the only things that unites us all. Gathering together on special occasions and preparing ritualistic dishes – the turkey on Christmas, the roast beef on Sunday – is present in nearly all cultures. Yet, in an increasingly connected world not all of these culturally significant feasts are deemed to be appropriate. I’m talking, of course, about the annual dog-eating festival that takes place in Yulin, China. This festival has been garnering a great deal of Western media attention lately. Solely, it seems, for the reason that the idea of eating a dog is severely disturbing to our pet-loving nations. We put puppies on our toilet roll, not our plates.
The Humane Society International, an animal protection organization, has been particularly vocal about trying to get this event shut down. ‘Kidnapped pets, destined for slaughter’ reads an article on their website. However, I was surprised to learn that while the Humane Society does encourage the adoption of a vegetarian diet it does so in very laid back terms. In fact, they call it being a ‘flexitarian’.
No, this doesn’t mean that eating is now replaced by yoga. According to their website being a flexitarian means ‘waking up every day and trying to be more vegetarian’. It promotes things such as ‘meatless Mondays’ and avoiding products like battery-farmed eggs. Eating meat, while not encouraged, is most certainly not condemned. In other words, the chicken you buy from a Western supermarket is no cause for outrage.
Now, it’s not that there is anything wrong with being a ‘flexitarian’ (apart from the terrible name). It’s just, if you compare the Yulin dog-eating festival to our own summer barbecues, the only real difference is what’s on the menu. How can one be so fundamentally wrong and the other completely acceptable? Rationally it makes no sense.
Obviously, to Westerners, eating a pig is hugely different from eating a dog. People eat pork everyday. We have reconciled ourselves with the fact that for us to enjoy bacon sandwiches then we must slaughter pigs, on mass. But when it comes to types of meat we are not morally prepared to consume – say dogs, cats or as the horse meat scandal in the UK proves, horses – then anyone who does not conform to Western dietary habits is condemned as a monster. Even celebrities like Ricky Gervais have stepped in to call for people to help stop the Yulin festival. ‘No animal deserves to be treated like this’ he states on his Facebook page.
And yet, animals are treated like this; and it’s not just dogs. Gervais, to be fair, is an avid animal welfare campaigner and proud vegetarian. He’s perfectly aware of the strange hypocrisy of our society; one that glorifies micro-pigs while having pork chops for dinner. Of the facts circulating the internet the one that seems to be repeated most is the number of dogs killed annually during the festival: 10,000. Which, when compared to other statistics – say the fact that 25,000 piglets are slaughtered every day in Denmark alone – is utterly negligible in terms of the total amount of animal suffering that occurs on our planet. The fact is that we’re being very species specific when it comes to what animal cruelty offends us.
HSI are clearly attempting to promote higher animal-welfare in realistic terms. After all, it’s a nonprofit organization founded in America – the country that consumes the second largest amount of meat per person in the world (second only to Luxembourg). If they started asking all Americans to turn vegetarian immediately they would get nowhere. It would literally be like asking a cowboy to swap his steak for a vegetarian sausage.
But, then again, isn’t that what Westerners are saying to the people Yulin? If India vocally objected to America’s insatiable taste for beef, Bill O’Reilly would openly mock the country on Fox News. And yet, when it comes to eating dog-meat, international organizations are attempting to mediate what the people of the Guangxi region of China should and should not eat. Even if it has been a traditional part of their diet for millennia (that’s not to say all Chinese people condone eating dog, thousands protest against the Yulin festival and others like it).
Any meat-eater who believes the Yulin festival is morally abhorrent should, perhaps, take a look at their own diet before condemning the traditional food of another culture. And, if they truly believe the Yulin festival should be banned then extend that same logic to Western society. Protect animals globally, regardless of species. Ban pig-farms. Ban abattoirs. Ban Nando’s. And anyone who is claiming to disagree with the Yulin festival purely because of the way in which the animals are killed (reportedly being boiled and skinned while still alive) should really educate themselves about the realities of modern farming. Type farrowing crates into Google and you’ll see what I mean.
If Western society really cared about animals we wouldn’t treat the vast majority of them the way we do. We care about dogs, but not pigs. We love cats, but not chickens. Animal rights should be like human rights, extended to everyone regardless of race. Suffering is suffering no matter what genus you belong to.
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