Dog Market in South Korea

[Ragnarok]

To be completely honest, I don't see anything wrong here. I'll list my reactions as I watch the video.

Eating dogs? Sure. Meat is meat. People eat other things kept as pets without a second thought (rabbits, pigs, horses, etc), and no one complains then.

The dogs kept in the cages when at the market? Of course. The same thing happens at other live-animal markets. Would you prefer all of the dogs running around?

"A wild boar is squealing in terror as its time of death has arrived." Anyone watched the Dirty Jobs episode with the farmed pigs? Pick one up, and it'll squeal like crazy. It's got nothing to do with knowing it's about to die.

Pet distribution:
"Most are from farms, but some are believed to be abandoned, some strays that were caught," followed by pictures of some cute-looking dogs. A rather blatant accusation, aimed at making you think that they're stealing and butchering pets, but no actual evidence of this is presented.

Dogs packed into cages:
Not that much different than the live-chicken shops that you see, with the chickens likewise packed into cages.

Dogs attacking each other in cages:
I worked at an animal shelter, and the dogs there would readily lunge at each other, even if they're located many feet apart. Doesn't surprise me at all.

Injured dog:
Should have been killed on the spot, rather than left to die. Of course, there's nothing that says that that is what is happening, other than the biased videomaker.

"Pets on display at the slaughterhouse"
This one's even more blatant than the previous example. Are they actually pets, or just more of the "well, they might be pets" that they mentioned before? I, for one, am not just taking their word for it. Also, if they were, are they current (i.e. stolen or abandoned) pets or ex-pets (i.e. ones that the owners gave up)? Other animals are slaughtered for meat, even after being pets, so this may not be exactly as presented.

"Malamute resists violently..."
Most dogs will resist a leash if they're not accustomed to it. That just looks like a dog who's on the leash for the first time. I've had dogs at the animal shelter do similar things when I was trying to get them away from other dogs.

Electric shock:
Is that the norm, or an exception? If the norm, they need to find a better way to do it. If an exception, there's little sense in presenting it in this manner, other than to evoke an emotional response.

Hanging the dog:
Seems terribly inefficient to me, not to mention causing unnecessary pain and suffering to the dog. And just as mentioned above, the norm, or an exception?

The kid abusing the dog:
What does this have to do with the market?

More humane method of killing the dog:
Which is more like how it should be done.



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In general:
While the method of slaughter was wrong, this video failed to evoke much more reaction than what I felt looking at pictures and images from any other slaugherhouse.

If they want to argue against this, in my opinion, at least, they're far better off with a well-supported argument, than with a raw emotional appeal. Just doing that made me, I think, more hostile to their point than I might otherwise be. The continual use of leading phrases was a second, equally detrimental point, so they lost, either way.

That aside, though, the only things that seemed "wrong" to me were the ways the dogs were killed in the first two examples.

Edit: Removed link since it didn't work right.
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[Fenris]

I agree with Ragnarök. Even though I always get burned for this. The world is a terrible place we live in luxury others don't who are we to judge. It may seem inhumane to you but that begs the question what is humanity. This cannot be defined and yet is always judged.
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[Samariyu]

Ragnarok, you made many points that I failed to state in my post.

For example: yeah, it was pretty obvious that the video was just pure propoganda. The individual who made it was also pretty redundant in their grammer usage. I'd forgotten how many forms of the word "cruel" you could have .

And yes, as I stated in my last post, not everyone has the financial luxury that we do; they can't afford to get better living conditions for their livestock, and they are unable to switch occupations without some serious concequences for them in their families.

I do understand all that you're saying, but their's no denying that certain things filmed in the video were clear-cut cases of animal cruelty. (not like, as stated above, their owners are in a position to change that. But those who are able need to do something, because there are people and animals clearly in poverty. Maybe South Korea {was that where this was filmed?} is a good place to start. Hey, I just got a new charity idea.)
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[albvan]

I agree with Samariyu's last post.
I'd say that this way of killing animals can be attributed mostly to tradition. South Korea is one of the most developed countries in the world (at least much more developed than my country), and its hard for me to believe that farmers don't have money to buy a special pistol for killing livestock (every farmer in Croatia has it), and have to hang the animal instead.
So, this way of killing can't be justified.

However, I do understand that these people do not have a proper place to breed or kill animals in. Korea is a densely populated country (unlike e.g. Croatia or the US), which means it traditionaly lacks land for farming. Further more, it is a country which experienced rapid urbanization, caused by rapid industralization. Millions of people sold their land and left their villages in only a few decades and all of them ended up in only a few Korean cities. Of course, the cities couldn't take so many immigrants at once and many people failed to find new jobs. And most of them, landless, continue their traditional way of life in an unsuitable environment, in a large city. These people are a leftover of S Korea's transfomation from one of the poorest to one of the richest countries "overnight". The best solution for these people, in my opinion, is to stop breeding animals and find new occupations, but I know nothing about how S Korea deals with these problems.

[Namhias]

[Ragnarok]

[Namhias]

I agree with you that you have some valid arguments. You're right, it could be that the western world considers eating "pets" as a no go. However, I don't consider cows and pigs as "food items". I think the way animals are slaughtered in slaughterhouses is wrong. Not because eating animals is bad or wrong, I just disagree with the methods used to kill them.

[Onyx]

I think those people also kill and eat cats >.<
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