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The argument would be how intelligent the farmed creature is. People have a great connection with dogs due to the dog's intelligence.

Problem is cows and pigs are also very intelligent. The only reason people are so comfortable eating them is they aren't pets in a home for 99% of people. Out of sight, out of mind. So people feel it's absurd to eat dog, because they can look up from their screen and see a dog happy for their attention, practically family.

I Guarantee if people were around a pig or a cow as a pet as often or regularly as dogs, we wouldn't eat them.

In order to better live with the fundamental contradiction of loving animals but also eating them, people put some animals in the “pet” box and some in the “meat source” one with a one way street between the two, in that animals that would be considered meat sources can become pets but never the other way around.

I bet it subconsciously makes some people feel more compassionate towards animals. But it's nothing more than a moral contradiction trying to be masked.

It makes sense to feel some sense of apprehension or even disgust when the topic of eating dogs is brought up because it feels so geographically and culturally distant from us, but the truth is you can see this happen across the relatively small European continent. Dog meat used to be a thing in Switzerland, maybe not anymore. Nordics will be horrified to learn cute bunnies are a very culturally relevant meat source down south in the Mediterranean (traditional paella contains both rabbit and chicken meat), where they are also kept as pets. France loves their horse meat but in other places of Europe this is unheard of. And so on.

Don't get me wrong, I eat meat and have a couple of cats as housemates. You couldn't pay me enough money to try cat meat. But I don't pretend like it isn't a fundamental contradiction, nor will you see me retching if I hear eating cats is a thing in some region/culture.

I think the particular issue with the dog meat industry is that it has high amounts of cruelty, even by meat industry standards. Iirc there's the belief involved that if the dog suffers it makes the meat taste better. So at many farms they are often tortured before death and killed in painful ways. They are also kept in horrendous conditions. Farm animals are often kept in horrendous conditions as well, but generally that's because of a lack of regulation and most people who oppose dog meat farms also oppose the mistreatment of farm animals as well.

It bothers us because we know that dogs are relatively intelligent, often kind, feel pain and get sad. In many ways they act like children. We know this because many of us have pets or know people who have dogs as pets. Same thing for horses, to a lesser degree. This makes it harder to lie to yourself or ignore their suffering, and makes us feel bad about eating meat and the suffering that inevitably entails. If pigs, who are surprisingly intelligent, were common household pets, we'd feel bad about that too. But they aren't, so we get to pretend that they're stupid and don't die in pain and in fear.

In many ways, it's not much different to how most of us decide to pretend that child labour or slavery no longer exist, despite regular revelations about the suffering our consumerist purchasing decisions perpetuate. Or how we're happy to buy unnecessary nonsense, replacing perfectly good clothes, replace a functional phone with the newest shiny thing, spend money on content that we could easily do without, rather than donate to a charity that could have prevented children and innocents dying needlessly. We know deep down that we're choosing to let people die, we pretend we don't so we can buy some more luxuries.

People are often evil. This is the baseline of human behaviour. We like to convince ourselves we're not, by occasional acts of goodness.

True. While I don't think humanity doesn't have to avoid consuming animal products as a whole it would be great if alternative protein sources were cheaply available (and ideally subsidized) so that cheap meat products become unappealing.
Simultaneously we should have a higher standard of treatment for animals and beef in particular should be much less available because of its extensive influence on the climate.

Different trophic levels

We generally eat Ferdinand, Wilbur and Henny Penny. Bambi isn't usually available in stores.

Yeah, no meat eating dog lover wants to admit it's just as cruel to raise cows and pigs for meat. We have an arbitrary definition of animals that are friends vs food. I think this whole anti dog meat thing is an interesting commentary. This is coming from a dog loving and owning meat eater.

I haven't met anyone below sixty who eats dog meat. Even if it doesn't get banned, I'm sure the practice will die out within one generation. It's definitely getting rarer and rarer.

It's sad that a fringe, outdated practice reflects poorly on the whole country. Most Koreans love dogs and they're as horrified by the practice as Westerners are.

I’d like to see them ban other animal meat with just as much fervor.