I want to start this post by stating that I love dogs.
Recently, A dog sledding company in British Columbia has been all over the news for culling 100 of their dogs because their company wasn't making enough money and the dogs had become too costly to "care" for. An employee of the company who helped in killing the animals filed a workers compensation grievance, and the story leaked. A certainly disgusting act that is incomprehensible to say the least.
Having said that, this brings up an interesting ethical question for us Westerners. Why is it that such outrage and instant support from voices of those who rarely speak out only arises when a dog is treated unethically? The easy answer may be that most of us have owned dogs and therefore we can call on deeper connections to them when we hear of such acts committed. However, I also think that it is our lack of understanding and maybe more so our Western mentally of "I don't want to know"... because if I did then I might actually have to start to question and change my/our way of life. A symptom which in my opinion starts to seep into far too many facets of our daily lives, the inability to question the world around us.
What I am referring to is the blatantly unethical treatment and subsequent mass slaughter of animals that takes place in North America every single day, hour, and second. Other than PETA activists this utterly insane activity is not spoken or addressed fairly enough.
To put this topic into perspective. The average factory farm animal (cow, chicken, pig) lives in conditions their entire lives that are less than acceptable; standing knee high in their own shit, unable to turn around, parts of their body maimed, never seeing daylight, trampled to death in their stalls, never breathing fresh air, never feeling soil under them, drugged up, and experiencing stress levels that no dog likely ever does. On top of their dismal and short existence in this world, many of these factory farmed animals are slaughtered in ways which make shooting a dog in the head seem in all honesty quite nice, compared to: chickens thrown live into boiling water baths, cows bled from their throats until their life is painfully drained to nothing, pigs electrically shocked to death... In 2008 in the U.S. 287 chickens, 3.68 pigs, and 1.12 cows are slaughtered every SECOND!
This is not a plea to turn everyone into a vegetarian, but it is one to support more ethical and sustainable choices of meat, as well as to eat meat less often. It is important that we demand (from our government, producers, and suppliers) better practices from our meat industry as we currently have very little choice besides factory farming...an excellent reason to raise your voice for animal welfare every day.
