Yulin 2015

In recent news there has been a huge controversy surrounding the Yulin festival in China. This festival consists with the theft and cruel slaughter of dogs. Various celebrities such as Ricky Gervais and Ian Somerhalder have joined in on the campaign. I agree that this sort of festivals should stop, cruel massacre should never be acceptable, and they are slaughtering dogs, I say slaughter because there is no nicer way to put it, animals which are supposed to be man's best friends, but it's absolutely hypocritical on behalf of men to be standing up against this, but then immediately do it again, not with dogs, but cows, pigs and chicken.

I would like to clarify, I have been vegetarian since a little over two years ago, so I would like to be as unbiased as possible.

China has had a history of eating dogs for various years, yes, it's tradition, but it's a tradition that should be broken because they don't only kill "mans best friends" but they are stealing them from their owners, and killing an exaggerated amount of them, which should be unnecessary, they are purely doing it for the fun of it, however this is being disguised as making bad spirits go away. We can't absolutely stop a tradition that has been going on for decades, but we could change it. 

In recent years the consumption of dogs has decreased gradually, more and more people are keeping them for security or company, with only 8.2% of the population keeping them for consumption. I understand that change can't be made in one day, but we should hope that in the future, the next generation make things right, all we have to do is hope for the best. Ultimately, hopefully, this is a dying tradition.

As to why I think it's hypocritical, it's basically because we are only defending dogs because they are cute, why don't we make a big deal about killing cows and chicken, just because they are not as "cute" as dogs does it mean that we can kill them. These are animals, just like them, they breathe, eat reproduce, etc. so why should we kill cows too. We say we protect animals, but everyday people unconsiously are eating slaughtered animals, because nearly all of the meat that you buy from the supermarket comes from a factory farm.

So I would like to end by just asking a question why would slaughtering dogs be any different than cows, they are killed nearly the same way?