If there is one truism of the internet that we can all agree on, it’s that we all love our cat and dog pics. Really, we just love all the animal pics.
The globalism of the internet has also revealed cruelty to animals that may have slipped under the radar previously.
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But the internet can also play a role in changing those cruel practices, both through activism and cultural perception.
We all know about South Korean dog farms, where puppers are kept in cages, fed on scraps, and then killed and sold for their meat.
Let’s just agree that it’s awful and skip the gory details, okay?
The practice of eating dog meat is a long tradition for the country.
It’s said that during the Joseon Dynasty (AD 1392-1910), the government expected the local butchers to “deal” with the feral dog problem. So dog meat became the cheap option for the poor.
But even then, there were people that argued against the practice.
Some government officials at the time tried to argue that dogs were companion animals and eating their meat should be banned, but it’s not until recently that those arguments have begun to outweigh the tradition.
Besides pressure from international animal rights groups, the younger generation is also against it.
The practice has become taboo among them, and consumption of dog meat has been declining steadily.
In June 2018, the ruling court of the city Bucheon declared that killing dogs specifically for meat was illegal.
Dog meat farms are a weird gray area in South Korean law.
Due to that lack of clarity, farms have been able to keep operating while local groups and governments attempt to shut them down through roundabout means.
In late 2018, the country’s largest dog slaughterhouse was shut down, and Humane Society International (HSI) has been working with dog farmers to transition to another form of livestock.
And now, Seoul’s Mayor Park Won-soon has announced that all slaughterhouses in the capital city will be shutdown.
Park has been vocal about the need to get more dogs homes and promotes adoption from local shelters.
He made his announcement after a screening of the movie Underdog , which is an animated story about abandoned dogs living in the Demilitarized Zone.
Due to the unclear laws, he can’t just shut all of them down.
“Currently, one or two dog slaughterhouses remain,” he explained , “I cannot force them to go out of business, so I will put pressure on them to move.”
Getting them to move may not be a perfect solution, but it’s a start.
The expense of moving and of transporting meat from a farther location could cause them to give up.
The decline in consumption could mean that it’s just not financially viable anymore.
Meanwhile, the popularity of dogs as companions keeps growing, and with it a boom in pet-specific industries, such as pet day cares and grooming salons. Perhaps those farmers should just put down their knives and pick up the clippers instead.
