Of Dogs And Pigs

This video shows some pet pigs at a dog park. The dogs' reaction to the two mini pigs is intriguing. Watch a bit of it and then scroll down.



I watched over three minutes of this video before it hit me: Why do people(*) feel comfortable eating the flesh from Bomber and Prissy's species but not the flesh of Canis lupus familiaris? Does that make ANY sense? Is it not surreal to bend down to pet your dog, then ooh and ahh about the cute pigs and your dog's reaction to them, and then go home to eat a ham sandwich?

Having a double standard of this kind is called "speciesism", a word that means assigning different values or rights to beings simply on the basis of their species. This is what allows us to pet the dog but eat the pig, kiss our parakeet's tummy and then eat chicken. Speciesism is not much different from the other "isms" but hasn't yet gathered the validity that racism, for example, currently possesses.

I feel sure that one day speciesism will be looked at the way we now look at racism. Leonardi da Vinci is quoted to have said, "The time will come when men such as I will look on the murder of animals as they now look on the murder of men." He also said, "Truly man is the king of beasts, for his brutality exceeds them. We live by the death of others. We are burial places." Today it's hard to understand how white people felt comfortable lynching black people but it was acceptable during that dark period of our country's history. If da Vinci was right then one day murdering animals for their flesh will also become unacceptable.

Writer Alice Walker, who is best known for her 1982 novel The Color Purple (which won her the Nobel Prize for Literature) once wrote, "The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men." She touches on a very important idea that supports speciesism, which is that some people believe that animals were created for us to use any way we see fit. PeTA's slogan is "animals are not ours to eat, wear, experiment on, or use for entertainment," and I've always said that just because we can take advantage of animals (kill and eat them) doesn't mean we should (kill and eat them.)

So I urge you to watch the above video again. Watch it with a new understanding of what we choose to believe about our position in our relationship with animals. See if it doesn't hit you differently this time.


(*)The people I'm referring to are those of us in developed countries who pet the dog and eat the pig. There are many people on this planet who eat dogs, cats, and horses. Although that bothers me very much they are, in some strange fashion, less hypocritical about what they're doing.