THERE was a time when eating dogs was an “accepted” – albeit frowned upon and considered disgusting – practice among the natives in the Cordillera mountains.
Until recently “animal welfare” is a very uncommon word in these islands, but how time and trend quickly change. Nowadays “animal welfare” is a trendy thing to do and every social climber wants to get into it and stop “dog meat eating”.
Animal Welfare, as defined by the American Veterinary Medical Association, is a human responsibility that encompasses all aspects of animal well-being, including proper housing, management, disease prevention and treatment, responsible care, humane handling, and, when necessary, humane euthanasia.
Meanwhile; Animal Rights is a philosophical view that animals have rights similar or the same as humans. True animal rights proponents believe that humans do not have the right to use animals at all. Animal rights proponents wish to ban all use of animals by humans.
In case you’re wondering both concepts go hand in hand almost like twin sons of different mothers.
The concepts of “animal welfare” and “animal rights” are anchored on the fact that animals are “sentient beings”. Now in case you get lost in translation what in the world I’m talking about, from that free online encyclopedia a.k.a. the internet:
Sentience is the capacity to feel, perceive or experience subjectively…In modern Western philosophy, sentience is the ability to experience sensations (known in philosophy of mind as “qualia”). In Eastern philosophy, sentience is a metaphysical quality of all things that require respect and care.
A sentient being is a creature that can suffer and feel pain; mostly animals and humans.
And Hypocrisy is the contrivance of a false appearance of virtue or goodness, while concealing real character or inclinations, especially with respect to religious and moral beliefs; hence, in a general sense, hypocrisy may involve dissimulation, pretense, or a sham.
The most popular thing or “in thing” today is to fancy one’s self as an “animal welfare advocate” and these so-called “animal welfare advocates” would take pictures of animals suffering, particularly dogs and cats, and then post them on social media (in this case, the most popular medium is Facebook).
They “rescue” these “stray dogs or cats” and post pictures of it on Facebook, and campaign against the “eating of dogs”.
Actually these stray animals could perfectly be happy living free on the streets fending for themselves as nature intended them to be than being “rescued” and placed in cages for the rest of their lives.
Take note that they’re animals and have no concept of Christmas and birthdays.
Campaigning to stop the slaughter of dogs for human consumption is lovely, in fact it is highly commendable. But why stop with dogs?
And what about the pigs, the chickens, the goats and the cows to name other animals that are also slaughtered for human consumption? What makes them any different from dogs?
All these other animals slaughtered for human consumption are sentient beings just like us and the dogs; meaning, just like us, they have the ability to feel pleasure, pain and, above all, fear from being slaughtered to be eaten.
So why only dogs? And that’s where the hypocrisy in animal welfare lies. Why should we not eat only the dog? Why not all the rest of the animals that are sentient?
Making the dog special or exempted is akin to racism or in more specific terms, speciesism – a form of discrimination based on species membership. It involves treating members of one species as morally more important than members of other species even when their interests are equivalent.
Let me give you a more graphic example. During World War II in Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler considered the so-called Aryan race as superior and all other races inferior thus from Jews to Slavs they were all rounded up and placed in concentration camps to be slaughtered.
Meanwhile in the Philippines and the rest of the world, the dog should not be slaughtered for human consumption but the rest of the other animals are slaughtered for human consumption.
The parallel is quite uncanny and take note “humane slaughter” is just a euphemism; at the end of the day they will still be killed and eaten.
And the “animal welfare advocate” just “rescued” dogs from an illegal slaughterhouse. Feeling tired and hungry but proud of what he believes they have accomplished, they went to nearby Jollibee (or was it McDonalds?) to reward themselves for a “job well done.” Of course they had Chicken Joy or Big Macs.
So you claim you’re an “animal welfare advocate”? What a coincidence you also eat them./PN
