The issue with dogs is that there are no dog farms. All of the dogs eaten are stolen or taken from the street.

I think people would still be outraged if there were dog farms. Especially if the living conditions wee like in pig farms.

in korea where dogs are eaten often, the dogs come from dog farms.

> there are no dog farms

Definitely are Asia (Laos and Cambodia, I think)

I think the key difference here is that dogs were bred for thousands of years, to be our companions, while pigs were bred as food. That's where it comes from.

You are looking at the extrinsic value of a pig, but when it comes to ethics, you should look at its intrinsic value.

A pig wants to live just like a dog does. They want to avoid pain and suffering just like a dog does. They seek comfort just like dogs. The fact that they were bred for a certain human purpose, doesn't change any of that.

Intrinsically, an ant, or a fly, wants to live just like pigs or dogs. It's ok to kill ants and flies because it is socially approved by the majority of humans around you. In some communities in china, it's ok to kill dogs for eating them, so a person would feel ok doing it. The animal doesn't matter at all, only the opinion of humans around you. As it happens, lighting dogs on fire is not widely accepted, and killing pigs for food is. It's the culture that matters.

In what way is that a meaningful distinction?

I've been thinking about this recently.

In a society, people seem to taboo things which indicate a general lack of emotion toward other members of the society. With farm animals, there are social (and religious and legal!) rules around maintenance and slaughter, and farmers deal with large groups of animals, so the relationship between farmer and animal is one-to-many and doesn't leave much room for long term emotional bonds to form.

For working animals and pets, the bond is one-to-one, and involves working directly with the animal in question. The relationship with a working animal is much closer to the relationship with another human. Thus, killing a dog in a society where the role of a dog is to herd cattle makes you seem dangerous to the people around you, while killing a cow in a society where cows are food is explicitly sanctioned and not an indication that you might murder your co-workers.

I think those are some good observations around explaining the taboo, but I think you'll agree that they're descriptive rather than prospective.

Because when one curates something for a specific purpose, it is sub optimal to use it contrary that purpose. In this case, dogs have specifically been domesticated to be companions for humans for something like 15,000 years. Humans specifically selected for specific behaviors and traits for dogs for them to be more compatible with humans. In the United States, dogs are used almost exclusively as pets and helper animals.

Pigs have never been domesticated in that way in large numbers and have always generally been used as food, or for limited other purposes, occasionally as pets.

I think this difference in lineage and purpose leads to a very meaningful distinction.

It's a betrayal of trust.

You know how Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has a pig that has been genetically bred to want to be eaten? Like that is it's greatest desire in the world.

Dogs have been selectively bred over thousands of years to want to be our friends - to trust us, and to work together as companions. To deliberately kill and eat an animal like that is worse than eating any other.

You're conflating things at the species and individual level.

The dog species doesn't trust us (in any meaningful way). Individuals dogs do. Likewise, regardless of what we've bred "food" animals for, properly cared for farmed animal will hold the same implicit trust in a farmer as a dog does with his owner.

These evaluations need to be made at the individual level to make any sense.

Not a pig it was (will be?) a cow.