Meatopia Glasgow Attendees Confronted With ‘Dog BBQ’
Last Friday (12 June), PETA supporters confronted festivalgoers with a lifelike “dog” being grilled on a barbecue bearing the words, “If You Wouldn’t Eat a Dog, Why Eat a Pig? Go Vegan!”
A “chef” at the scene urged onlookers to question why they recoil at the idea of eating one animal while accepting the suffering of others.
Whether they’re a dog, a pig, or any other sentient individual, there’s no excuse to eat animals. Pigs, cows, and chickens are thinking, feeling beings who value their lives, just as dogs do. Yet meat-eaters make arbitrary distinctions based on species, not an animal’s capacity for suffering.
Eating Pigs, But Not Dogs, Is Speciesism
This inconsistency is speciesism – a misguided belief that one species is more important than another. Just as we reject other forms of discrimination, we should reject the arbitrary hierarchy that places some animals on sofas and others on plates. As PETA President Ingrid Newkirk famously observed, “When it comes to pain, love, joy, loneliness, and fear, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy. Each one values his or her life and fights the knife.” Our compassion shouldn’t stop at the animals we happen to share our homes with.
The Reality of Animal Agriculture in the UK
In the UK, pigs are subjected to painful mutilations as standard practice. Workers cut off piglets’ tails, clip their teeth with pliers, and castrate males – all without pain relief. Many are crammed into barren, overcrowded sheds where they’re denied the chance to root, explore, or engage in natural behaviours.
Their lives end in slaughterhouses, where they’re killed violently for “food” that people don’t need to eat. Each person who goes vegan spares nearly 200 animals every year, while also reducing their environmental footprint and lowering their risk of developing life-threatening diseases such as heart disease, some cancers, and type 2 diabetes.
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The choice to go vegan is a stand against this injustice. It’s a rejection of cruelty in all its forms.
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