Animal Aid

Would you eat dog for dinner?

Posted 11 October 2011

Celebrity chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has shocked the nation by claiming that eating a dog is no different from eating a pig. Animal Aid welcomes this thought-provoking suggestion and hopes it will make people stop and question their inconsistent behaviour towards animals. Why are some species thought worthy of our compassion and respect, while others are exploited and killed for their body parts?

This was the question Animal Aid posed to the public during our 'dog meat' trailer tour of UK farmers markets in November 2010. The catering trailer featured pictures of happy, healthy dogs running through fields, chasing balls and swimming in streams. Fake dog meat was offered to passers-by with the assurance that all the animals were loved and well cared for before being butchered. Our message was that, whether organic, free-range or factory farmed, all animal farming involves treating sentient beings as mere commodities to be mass-produced and killed for food.

The problem is that most of us are brought up to believe that it is acceptable to eat some species, while others are treated as companions. The meat industry enforces this message by marketing flesh in a way designed to break the link with a living, feeling being. But animals who are regarded as suitable for food can feel pain and suffer in the same way as any dog or cat who may share our home. Welfare laws for farmed animals wouldn’t exist in the UK if we didn’t think they can feel pain or suffer.

If we were to meet a cow, pig, sheep or chicken face-to-face we would realise that they are just as friendly, emotionally sensitive and as capable of forming bonds as any dog or cat in our lives.

Animal products are not essential for a healthy diet, We can live long and healthy lives on a plant-based diet without causing pain and suffering to other sentient beings. The choice is yours!

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