Moral values aren't necessarily utilitarian, culture and human nature is wrapped up in it. Babies have a similar intelligence to pigs but people who eat babies are considered kind of jerks. Even if you're the mother who made the baby it's frowned on to eat the baby.

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.

I, likewise, eat pork and am not likely to start eating dog but I don't condemn people who do it.

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.

I think it's because we've mostly had a master-slave relationship with pigs, but dogs have always been a (lob-sided) partnership.

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.

I call those specific people on their hypocrisy when possible. My brothers even had a pot-belly pig as a house pet at one point. They said it acted basically like a dog in terms of personality. So, unethical to kill dogs but not smart animals that act like dogs? Ha...

> Pigs have a similar level of intelligence to dogs

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

I've never heard of dogs being smart?

>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.

I'm quite sure that said alpha species is providing far more pigs with food and shelter than dogs. The suicidal strategy of being tasty seems to work quite well on the species level.