It is a festival held in China to
celebrate the summer solstice, where dogs are rounded by the thousands, some
even stolen from households, and slaughtered in the most barbaric way, and
eaten. Social media is instrumental these days in helping get word around so
awareness is created faster and action is initiated earlier than ever before.
What it does is get reactions from people with different opinions, exposing
what really goes on in people’s minds.
Being a meat eater myself leaves me wondering where humans will draw the line, and be satisfied, quite literally, with what the already have on their plate. Being a meat eater makes it difficult for me to judge what someone else is eating. But as humans, who have evolved and are supposedly civilized, we should try and live in harmony with nature. We domesticated a selection of animals for our benefit and to make our lives more comfortable, but it was done with some thought. The chicken gave us eggs and when the demand for eggs went up, we started breeding more chickens. And then to maintain a balance of population, much like in the wild, the excess animals were eaten. The same went for other animals like cattle, with the male working in the fields and the female producing milk. Now for the cow to produce milk, she has to constantly giving birth, so again to maintain the balance in population, the excess animals were killed for their meat, and skin, etc.
However, there were some animals like the dog and the cat that were domesticated as pets and also as guard dogs in the case of the former. How and when dogs were introduced on the menu is unknown, and the fact is that there are just three places that I know of where dog is food. China, of course, consumes everything that moves and it is hardly surprising that a country that still consumes tiger at the great cost of its near extinction is capable of anything better. Philippines and the north east of India have very small areas where dog is consumed, and in my opinion is still understandable in the absence of knowledge of the circumstances prevailing. But a summer festival that kills tens of thousands of dogs to be eaten with lychees is just plain disgusting, not because the consumption is bad, but disgusting because of the level that humans have fallen to where you kill your best friend and eat him.
I eat meat but watching the slaughtering of an animal is very disturbing, and in the case of a do, rather unfathomable. Maybe it’s just what we are used to and how our mind has been moulded, and, at the risk of sounding hypocritical, I will insist that everyone should fight or at least articulate their disgust against this most unfortunate and unnecessary festival.