South Korea’s parliament passed a bill Tuesday banning the breeding and slaughter of dogs for consumption, ending the traditional yet controversial practice of eating dog meat after years of nationwide debate.
Cows were domesticated for the explicit purpose of being livestock, not companions. I do think they are intelligent, but I don’t believe their emotional intelligence is higher than that of a dog. Dogs literally evolved(bred) eyebrows to facially emote. Having been around cows, and known many farmers with cows and dogs, their emotional intelligence isn’t as apparent.
I am not trying to say cows don’t deserve compassion and rights, and frankly eating them is definitely immoral to some degree (yet I still do it). If we were feeding our livestock food scraps and not this corn eco-nightmare and humanely slaughtering, I dont think it would be. But dogs aren’t livestock and are clearly very social animals akin to our similarly protected animals like dolphins, whales, cats, etc. We make excuses for some cultures who are actually dependent on whales/seals etc because of actual longstanding tradition, sustainable harvesting practices, and somewhat humane (or at least no different from a predator/prey in nature), but we don’t need to make the same excuse for an industrial society not dependent on dogs and filled with nonsense about dog and cat meat’s healing properties
I guess for me, whatever difference in emotional intelligence a whale, dog, or cat has from a cow just isn’t enough to categorize them differently. For me it’s splitting hairs. I suspect it’s a symptom of working backwards to a solution from a problem. As a society we don’t like killing these animals. Why? Because we live more closely with them / enjoy their personality. Let’s call them emotionally intelligent and ban the consumption of meat from these types of animals.
Seems like an arbitrary definition arising out of an emotional response.
All this being said, I still eat meat. But I forced myself to come to terms with this, with as little guilt as possible. That helps me reduce and avoid my meat intake and support more alternative forms of protein. Something I think everybody could benefit from.
It’s not the emotional intelligence alone. It’s the result of dogs being bred for cohabitation/work, while the cow was livestock, which includes em int. It’s not splitting hairs, it’s genetics and evolution fueled by deliberate breeding.
Cows were domesticated for the explicit purpose of being livestock, not companions. I do think they are intelligent, but I don’t believe their emotional intelligence is higher than that of a dog. Dogs literally evolved(bred) eyebrows to facially emote. Having been around cows, and known many farmers with cows and dogs, their emotional intelligence isn’t as apparent. I am not trying to say cows don’t deserve compassion and rights, and frankly eating them is definitely immoral to some degree (yet I still do it). If we were feeding our livestock food scraps and not this corn eco-nightmare and humanely slaughtering, I dont think it would be. But dogs aren’t livestock and are clearly very social animals akin to our similarly protected animals like dolphins, whales, cats, etc. We make excuses for some cultures who are actually dependent on whales/seals etc because of actual longstanding tradition, sustainable harvesting practices, and somewhat humane (or at least no different from a predator/prey in nature), but we don’t need to make the same excuse for an industrial society not dependent on dogs and filled with nonsense about dog and cat meat’s healing properties
I guess for me, whatever difference in emotional intelligence a whale, dog, or cat has from a cow just isn’t enough to categorize them differently. For me it’s splitting hairs. I suspect it’s a symptom of working backwards to a solution from a problem. As a society we don’t like killing these animals. Why? Because we live more closely with them / enjoy their personality. Let’s call them emotionally intelligent and ban the consumption of meat from these types of animals.
Seems like an arbitrary definition arising out of an emotional response.
All this being said, I still eat meat. But I forced myself to come to terms with this, with as little guilt as possible. That helps me reduce and avoid my meat intake and support more alternative forms of protein. Something I think everybody could benefit from.
It’s not the emotional intelligence alone. It’s the result of dogs being bred for cohabitation/work, while the cow was livestock, which includes em int. It’s not splitting hairs, it’s genetics and evolution fueled by deliberate breeding.