Dogs: are they friends or food?

Dear Editor:

Quite often vegetarians have been asked why people object to the dog meat markets in Asian countries but remain relatively quiet about the 70-80 billion farm animals that are slaughtered annually just to satisfy the appetite for meat across the globe. The answer arrived unexpectedly in a begging letter from one of the animal charities I support.

Inside the envelope were photographs of dogs awaiting death at a dog-meat market. I’ve seen such pictures before and they never fail to ruin the rest of my day.

This time, the eyes of one dog caught my attention. He or she was a medium-size dog, a mutt often seen in poor countries roaming streets in search for food. The dog’s eyes looked calm but puzzled. From the neck down, his or her body was wrapped tightly in a fabric bag, reminiscent of frozen turkeys in the freezer section of supermarkets. The expression in those eyes made me feel shame for being a member of the human species.

The answer to the question is in a book called Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. He wrote that the dog was the first animal we humans domesticated. This happened before the Agricultural Revolution. I quote from the book: “A 15,000-year bond has yielded a much deeper understanding and affection between humans and dogs than between humans and any other animal.”

Humans betray a 15,000-year bond when they kill dogs for food, beat them in anger, or perform cruel laboratory experiments on them. Betrayal is the difference, however else you might feel about breeding, raising and killing over 70 billion farm animals for food. That puzzled look in the eyes of the trussed dog was betrayal of his trust in humans.