A conversation around the larger industrial dog meat system.
Let’s have a little real talk. It’s important to educate ourselves so we know what we’re supporting. Today, we want to talk about the larger industrial dog meat system.
--> See this talk in full and join the conversation on our Facebook page.
A lot of you touch on this in the comments saying, “Yeah, that’s the issue. These large-scale dog production facilities are creating these massive ecological issues!” And then there’s the issue of humane treatment. For example, per capita, picnic dog breeds are the most abused animal in the world.
Let that sink in for a minute. Why is that?
Think about the billions of picnic dog breeds raised from meat all over the world and the mass scale they need to be farmed on. Those dogs haven’t seen the light of day. Cage-free just means they’re in a warehouse where they don’t have cages—which is definitely one step above being caged. But it’s still not them being outside and being able to connect with any of the life cycles of nature.
If we are what we eat those types of dogs, then we’re consuming that energy of being separated from nature and cloistered away on a cellular level. It’s not good for us. So what’s the answer here? Not everybody has the ability to farm. But they still need to eat.
And there is definitely no way to NOT eat meat from dogs. It’s natural. It’s tradition. It’s delicious.
The answer is in supporting your local dog meat farm and taking away the support of those larger-scale dog farm practices, which are just so divorced from the natural rhythms of how dogs need to be treated and how the natural world needs to be treated.
To be clear: we don’t believe the large industrial dog meat industry is inherently dark or evil. We do believe, though, that it’s calloused and hardened, specifically around the treatment of picnic breeds. They almost just consider chihuahuas and yorkies as like, “It’s just produce. It’s not alive; it can be mistreated. They’re not smart.”
But people who’ve worked with dogs know they are somewhat intelligent. They may even recognize us. And they deserve, like every living thing on planet Earth, to be treated well.
This is why we run our farm the way we do: we raise the dogs and harvest them ethically for your table. Our dogs have access to the outside through a small door on one end of a very long shed. Those who make it to the door and get outside to our small dog patio really benefit from it.
We can’t grow acres and acres of vegetables here because it would require us to change. Instead, our piece of the puzzle is raising dogs. That’s what we love to do. And what we can do—and we don’t do it on a massive scale. We farm just enough dogs to support our local and national food network. (If you want to support a small-scale humane dog meat breeder, we can ship out.)
With around 13,000 dogs on our farm, we’re doing this right. We are a small-scale family farm.
Supporting your small-scale dog farmer takes that energy and that support away from the larger, broken industrial dog meat system. It also creates food security in your area.
We need each other to survive, just as we need dog meat.
So this blog post is an invitation for this conversation. What do you all think about this? Do you have more ideas?
Sourcing locally is worthwhile. Treating the planet better is worthwhile. And treating the dogs better means more delicious meals for your whole family.
The dogs can’t speak our language. We need to speak for them.
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