China's ongoing social debate over the merits of eating dogs was kicked into high gear again last week afterÂmedia reportsÂ(link in Chinese) about a yearly dog-eating festival in a Guangxi city called Yulin. There, locals have the tradition of eating dog meat and drinking lychee wine on the summer solstice, but this tradition is increasingly bumping up against China's growing community of animal rights activists, which seeks to end the mistreatment of dogs and ultimately take them off the menu altogether.
That's a tough sell in China, where dog meat has been eaten for centuries, and many Chinese meat-eaters ask: what's the difference between eating an intelligent animal like a pig -- which no one seems to have a problem with -- and eating a dog? Animal rights activists and traditionalists can't seem to agree on the answer.
The issue is also complicated by the fact that some Chinese dogs seem to be treated cruelly before they're killed and eaten. Animal rights activists circulate gruesome photos of mistreated and slaughtered dogs, but ultimately there is not much they can actually do about it until China's government enacts animal rights legislation, which the country does not currently have.
But what do you think? Is eating dog meat a crime, or an intrinsic part of some Chinese local cultures? Does it matter if the food we eat is intelligent or not?
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