And it's sort of interesting you bring up Asia considering that the outrage over Asians eating dog meat is much greater in Asia than it is in the West. Dogs are more and more seen as pets and not fit for consumption. Worldwide, dog meat consumption has trended sharply downward.

I eat bacon. Does that make me a hypocrite? I guess. Is that an accusation likely to make me start eating dogs or stop eating bacon? No.

It has been done in their cultures for centuries, I don't have the kind of hubris to think that my culinary customs should be everyone's.

The other aversion is the efficiency of dogs as food, being carnivores it takes a lot more resources to raise dogs for food than it does for pigs. Any society that went for dogs were going to get out competed.

Everything I've seen is that pigs are far smarter.

I've never heard of dogs being smart?

I dunno, managing to convince the alpha species of the planet not to eat then and instead to provide them shelter and food with no expectation of work in return could be considered pretty smart.

Whales and octopuses, I think, also fit the "animals we know to live in threatened conditions" criteria many of us apply to deciding who to eat.

The "threatened conditions" is a bit more debatable, e.g. the minke whales that are being caught today by Icelandic and Norwegian whaling are of the same endangerment status as e.g. moose and wild boar - "Least Concern". Also Greenpeace et al. use quite a bit of disingenious reporting, e.g. talking about Icelandic fishing of "endangered whales" when those whales aren't actually endangered in the oceans where the Icelandic vessels fish, but literally on the other side of the earth. (I'm not particularly pro-whaling either, just food for thought.)

Octopi are even less endangered, the two large species are not on any conservation list.