The harvesting of dog meat results in abuse

The argument

The raising and slaughtering of dogs, like that of any animal used for food, is not always humane. Some people respect the animals and raise them humanely, while others mistreat them before slaughter — and the argument turns on why the second group exists in the numbers it does, rather than treating mistreatment as a matter of individual cruelty. Economics supplies most of the answer. Some of the countries where dog meat is eaten suffer from high rates of poverty, and those communities do not always have the means or the money to raise animals for slaughter in humane and safe ways. Many of the reasons for such abuse come down to money. It is expensive to raise animals, and especially expensive to raise omnivorous, pack dynamic animals like dogs, whose diet costs more than a grazing animal's and whose social needs make cheap confinement a form of deprivation in itself. Cutting corners therefore tends to show up in what animals are fed and where they are allowed to live. Alongside this, there has been a long history of pet kidnappings as a way of acquiring animals for the dog meat market, which supplies the trade with animals that no one raised for it at all. What follows is that the abuse is not an incidental failing that better enforcement would remove, but a predictable consequence of raising an expensive animal for a market in places with little money to spend on doing it well. With the consumption of dog meat already a morally dubious act, the suffering the dogs inevitably undergo before death compounds the objection rather than standing separately from it, and gives the whole practice a dark outlook.

Context

Dogs aren't treated properly or humanely when they're meant for slaughtering and consumption.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Not all communities and cultures that consume dog meat treat them inhumanely, and the practice is evolving. Places like China and Vietnam have been revising their laws on animal abuse so they can be raised and treated humanely. To lump together entire cultures with the sole few who break the rules does not look at the bigger picture. Things are changing, and for the better. While it’s taking time to adjust to these changes fully, they have been well received by a majority of the populace. It’s not cruel to raise dogs for eating; it’s cruel to raise them in inhumane ways and slaughter them just the same.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise concedes at the outset that this holds for any animal raised for food, which makes it an argument about husbandry rather than about dogs — and so supports the sibling position that eating dog is no more immoral than eating other livestock. The claim about poorer communities explains why conditions may be bad without showing that they generally are. [Rejecting P2] Theft of pets wrongs their owners and those animals, and it is a reason to police the supply chain rather than to condemn the eating. The premise also moves from how a practice is currently carried out to whether the practice is immoral in itself — a step that would condemn any food whose production involves abuse, and one the counter answers by pointing to laws that have since changed.