Animal cruelty is a worldwide problem
Dear Dr. Fox: I recently read a letter sent to you by a reader who was extremely upset over learning of the treatment of dogs and cats in Asian countries. She didn’t mention the animal cruelty that also goes on in predominantly Muslim countries, but I’m very aware of that, as well.
The practice in Asian countries of eating dogs and cats is bad enough, in my opinion, but the way the animals are tortured prior to being eaten is barbaric to the extremes. No need to go into details; I implore people to research this for themselves, but warn that you’ll never be able to forget it. I also find the argument that always follows — that people in the West eat animals, too — to be ridiculous, in the sense that there’s no comparison to this practice
I’m writing about. But for argument’s sake, I also find the way animals are treated in the West appalling, and would like to ask all the “smart” people why a better, humane method hasn’t been found yet in our own part of the world.
I’m not a vegan; I do eat meat. But over the years, it’s become less appealing to me due to my love of animals.
I encourage all your readers to investigate and see for themselves what goes on in other parts of the world in this modern day and age. — M.W., Cumberland, Maryland
Dear M.W.: Muslims do not eat dogs. And from what I have witnessed, I would not single out Muslim practices of slaughtering food animals as any worse than ritual Jewish slaughter — or what I have seen in large industrial slaughtering facilities here in the U.S.
If I may quote my 2013 article “Islam and Animals: A Veterinary Bioethical Perspective” (available in full at drfoxvet.net):
“The practice of Islam, as well as of the two other monotheistic traditions ( Judaism and Christianity), has become severely corrupted over the centuries. … If we take, for example, Jesus’ actual teachings, then what G.K. Chesterton once said about Christianity may hold a grain of truth for most other religious traditions: (paraphrasing) ‘There is nothing wrong with Christianity except that no one has ever tried it.’
“I have witnessed ritual slaughter in Canada, the U.S., Tanzania and India, often being executed with neither skill nor reverence, the absence or presence of which makes little or no fundamental difference to the helplessness and terror of the animal. Either way, the Golden Rule is broken.”