I was more than a little annoyed yesterday when a well-intentioned friend tried to get me to sign a celebrity-fronted petition, which exhorted me to:
Please act immediately to stop thousands of dogs from being tortured and butchered for their meat.
You can save thousands of dogs from unspeakable pain by adding your name to Soi Dog’s global petition. It calls on Thailand’s leaders to crack down hard on the criminals who profit from the agony of animals.
It did not help that the smug face of British comedian Ricky Gervais greeted me on the home page of this online petition (at soidog.com). There he was, evincing all the self-righteous indignation his irrepressibly comic face could muster, droning on about the horrors of poor Thais slaughtering dogs for meat to eat.
Most annoying of all, however, was his pitch for solidarity:
I had no idea dogs were being skinned alive for their meat. Did you?
In fact I did (and do) Ricky! And here’s why I couldn’t care any less:
Truth be told, I see no difference between Japanese hunting whales and Americans slaughtering cows. This is why I find Japan’s indignation towards save-the-whale protesters in the West so warranted.
Not to mention that there are many more people on this planet (most notably one billion Hindus) who consider slaughtering cows far more cruel and unethical than slaughtering dogs; or that Muslims and Jews consider slaughtering pigs to eat every bit as immoral and/or disgusting as Christians consider slaughtering dogs to eat.
And don’t get me started on the hypocrisy of Western countries having mouths too full of China’s money to voice any condemnation about its people’s penchant for eating dogs. They’d rather pick on the far weaker Thais.
Frankly, if Westerners were forced to watch how animals are slaughtered (and in many cases processed) for them to eat, they’d be far less judgmental about the Japanese hunting whales.
(“Japanese Whaling Harpooned by Western Cultural Bias,” The iPINIONS Journal, April 1, 2014)
Which of course raises the question: why target the Thais when the Chinese are slaughtering dogs for meat to eat too? After all, this is rather like making much ado about stopping gun violence in Canada when it would clearly make more sense to target gun violence in America.
As for Ricky fronting this save-the-dogs petition, he should try getting his compatriots to stop hunting foxes … just for sport. At least then he might have a little moral authority to pass judgment on the animals people kill … for food.
I gather other celebrities are putting on equally indignant faces for this cause. But, unless they are devout vegans, my contempt for their self-righteousness in this context is no less acute.
While we’re at it, here is what I had to say about the hypocrisy and carnivore snobbery inherent in indignation over slaughtering horses for meat to eat:
Eating horses was (and is becoming again) as commonplace in France, a nation of gastronomes nonpareil, as eating pigs is in the United States. Which makes all of the outrage over eating horse meat akin to barbarians accusing aristocrats of uncivilized behavior.
(“Why All the Outrage Over Horse Meat,” The iPINIONS Journal, February 22, 2013)
Besides, like hunting foxes, it’s arguably more humane to slaughter horses for food than to gallop them to death for sport.
Related commentaries:
Whaling…
Horse meat…