Yulin dog-eating festival
Announcement posted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Australia 25 Jun 2019
Dear Editor,
This week in Yulin, China, thousands of dogs — and even some cats — will be brutally slaughtered, and their flesh sold as food.
The Yulin Dog Meat Festival is widely and angrily condemned. The thought of killing, cooking, and eating dogs is truly shocking and disgusting.
But there’s no rational reason the thought of eating any other animal shouldn’t elicit the same revulsion. The idea that some species of animal deserve more moral consideration than others is called "speciesism" and has no more logical basis than other discriminatory beliefs like racism or sexism.
Animals objectified as "livestock" often face horrors akin to those endured by the dogs in Yulin. Dogs sent to Yulin are crammed into small cages and put on trucks, which may then travel for hundreds of kilometres, often with no food or water. The same is true for millions of sheep, lambs, cows, and other animals in Australia. The country’s live-export trade is even worse, transporting animals thousands of kilometres, only to face a gruesome death.
Some dogs in Yulin are, horrifyingly, boiled alive. But right here in Australia, countless chickens and turkeys meet a similar fate every day: at the abattoir, many of these intelligent birds manage to keep their heads out of the electrified water stunning baths. They are fully conscious as their throats are slit, and many are still alive as they're lowered into scalding-hot water to remove their feathers.
Whether a cow or a dog, a chicken or a sheep, no animal wants to suffer and die for our palate.
Yes, let's be outraged by the cruelty that takes place during the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, but let's not be hypocrites about it. We should drop the speciesism and extend our compassion to all animals by leaving them off our plates.
Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
PO Box 2352
Byron Bay NSW 2481
0411 577 416
desmondb@peta.org.au
This week in Yulin, China, thousands of dogs — and even some cats — will be brutally slaughtered, and their flesh sold as food.
The Yulin Dog Meat Festival is widely and angrily condemned. The thought of killing, cooking, and eating dogs is truly shocking and disgusting.
But there’s no rational reason the thought of eating any other animal shouldn’t elicit the same revulsion. The idea that some species of animal deserve more moral consideration than others is called "speciesism" and has no more logical basis than other discriminatory beliefs like racism or sexism.
Animals objectified as "livestock" often face horrors akin to those endured by the dogs in Yulin. Dogs sent to Yulin are crammed into small cages and put on trucks, which may then travel for hundreds of kilometres, often with no food or water. The same is true for millions of sheep, lambs, cows, and other animals in Australia. The country’s live-export trade is even worse, transporting animals thousands of kilometres, only to face a gruesome death.
Some dogs in Yulin are, horrifyingly, boiled alive. But right here in Australia, countless chickens and turkeys meet a similar fate every day: at the abattoir, many of these intelligent birds manage to keep their heads out of the electrified water stunning baths. They are fully conscious as their throats are slit, and many are still alive as they're lowered into scalding-hot water to remove their feathers.
Whether a cow or a dog, a chicken or a sheep, no animal wants to suffer and die for our palate.
Yes, let's be outraged by the cruelty that takes place during the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, but let's not be hypocrites about it. We should drop the speciesism and extend our compassion to all animals by leaving them off our plates.
Desmond Bellamy
Special Projects Coordinator
PETA Australia
PO Box 2352
Byron Bay NSW 2481
0411 577 416
desmondb@peta.org.au