People have an emotional attachment to their pets and consider them family

The argument

In the past, dogs were used to guard livestock against predators, and in other cases dogs were a food source. That practical logic no longer holds. With the development of freezers, commercial farming, and the meat industry, there is far less need to consume dogs as a food source, which means the practice must now be justified on grounds other than necessity — and no such grounds remain. What has replaced necessity is relationship. With dogs having the status of friends and family in many cultures, people refuse to eat dog meat because of that companionship, and the refusal is not squeamishness but a recognition of what the animal has become to them. These sentiments have started a movement in China to ban the dog meat trade, despite how prominent the consumption has been there, with the country being the world's largest consumer of dog meat. That such a movement has arisen in the place where the practice is most established suggests the objection is not simply one culture judging another; it is a judgement being made from within. One thing that separates dogs from other livestock sharpens the point. Dogs do not produce products for food, unlike other animals: chickens have eggs, and cows and goats have milk, but dogs do not make additional consumer resources. Every other domesticated animal earns its keep through what it yields while alive; the dog's entire value to humans stems from its companionship and from the reasons behind its domestication. In addition to being friends, dogs work — herding sheep, guarding the home, and helping the disabled. To eat an animal whose only contribution to human life has been loyalty and labour is to take the one thing it was never bred to give, and that is why eating dog meat is immoral.

Context

Dogs are more prominently being seen a pets, spreading a dislike of their consumption due to their new friend and family status.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Throughout history, people have always become emotionally attached to animals they've taken into their homes. Humans are empathetic creatures so it’s not odd for us to develop feelings the people and the animals we show care towards. We see theses emotional connections all the time in stories and the media. Dogs though are merely tools for many people that have a job to do. Fish are a type of pet people own yet still eat. While people may argue there's a less emotional attachment with fish, the concept is the same. There is no defining factor for when an animal becomes food instead of a friend. For Western cultures, there's a heavier distinction between friends and food due to pet culture, but for people who rely on the income their livestock brings, that line is easier to blur. A dog is just an animal for many cultures across the planet. While some might find such things cruel, it's no different than raising piglets to become pork on the dinner table.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The companion status of dogs is cultural rather than universal — dogs are working animals or livestock in many societies — so a locally held relationship cannot establish a general moral rule. [Rejecting P2] The secondary-products criterion does not track the moral claim: pigs and most poultry are raised solely for meat and produce nothing else, while fish are kept as pets and eaten without the distinction being treated as decisive. [Rejecting P3] That a practice is no longer necessary does not make it immoral — most meat eating in wealthy countries is unnecessary by that same standard, which is the point the sibling positions press.