“At the slaughterhouse, those who survived the transport will have their throats slit, often while they’re still conscious. Many remain conscious when they’re plunged into the scalding-hot water of the defeathering or hair-removal tanks or while their bodies are being skinned or hacked apart.” — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)

“They’re shipped long distances without food or water. Then they’re yanked from their cages to face a gruesome death: their throats are cut and some may even be boiled alive.” — The Huffington Post

These quotes reveal a horror that has been increasingly causing public outrage this past year. They are quite similar, both mentioning identical methods of killing animals for the production of meat. The only difference? The former concerns conditions in some U.S. factory farms while the latter describes customs in China’s Yulin Dog Meat Festival, an annual cultural celebration that has been receiving widespread criticism since its onset in 2010 (and for good reasons, too).

The unethical treatment of animals in the production of meat (as well as many other issues) has always been in the forefront of animal welfare activism. However, recent footage from undercover investigations by several animal activist groups in U.S. factory farms have surfaced on the internet and I can’t help but ask: what’s the difference between this and Yulin?

Before I go on, I want to clarify something:

I am solely focusing on meat production in U.S. factory farms which are known to use intensive and cruel methods to produce meat as quickly and as cost-efficiently as possible. While attending a seminar on the use of antibiotics in food swine medicine by former swine feed specialist for Zoetis/Pfizer Animal Health, Dr. Teddi Wolff, I asked her how common unethical treatment of animals in meat production was, to which she responded: “rare.” According to Dr. Wolff, herd farms prioritize the welfare of each individual animal, doing everything in their power to provide comfortable, clean environments for the animals. She remarked that the gruesome videos people see over the internet are the small number of “bad actors” (e.g. factory farms) which place all methods of meat production in a bad light.

One last note: this article isn’t intended to be some form of moral imperialism, but rather just my two cents on how society views meat production cross-culturally.

So, what exactly do these factory farms do? If you haven’t see the videos that have been surfacing online social-networking and media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, here are some methods of the factories and the conditions they leave animals in:

• Crowded, unclean (filthy feedlots, accumulation of excrements), windowless living spaces
• Extreme confinement in wired cages, metal crates, etc.
• Unnecessary usage of antibiotics to speed growth and chances of survival in unsanitary conditions
• Genetic manipulation to increase adult size of animals (chickens often grow to such unnaturally large sizes that their legs cannot support their bodies, leading to starvation and dehydration since they cannot reach food and water)
• Loaded onto trucks and transported to slaughterhouses (usually without food or water)
• Often killed by slitting their throats or boiling them in water while conscious
• Many animals die from disease and extreme weather conditions during transportation
• Many animals show signs of muscle atrophy and behaviors similar to humans who would be diagnosed with clinical depression and learned helplessness

Sources: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), ChicagoNow

So while the immoral and violent killing and eating of dogs in Yulin is most definitely worth our criticism and moral outrage, perhaps it’s time for the U.S. to step out of its bubble and reflect on its own affairs at home before condemning the actions of other cultures.

However, this in no way palliates the cruelty to dogs in Yulin nor invalidates activism against unethical treatment of animals around the world. Regardless of culture or geography, cruelty to animals is wrong and you can help make a difference through small changes in your decisions. I won’t mention becoming vegetarian as an option because 1. I’m not vegetarian and 2. It’s a largely debated topic (The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability by Lierre Keith is an interesting read, check it out). However, buying your meat directly from a farm (which is known to practice ethically) and shopping at farmers markets are essentially forms of boycott against the cruel methods of factory farms.

It’s up to you whether or not you care. But if you don’t, well, I don’t think you should be complaining about other cultures and their immoral practices.