“They are eating the dogs!” said Former President Donald Trump during Tuesday’s presidential debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “They are eating the cats. They are eating the pets,” he continued.
Although Trump was quickly fact checked by debate moderators, this unfounded comment can be used for good – while pets are certainly not being eaten by immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, a larger conversation needs to be had about how we treat our out four-legged friends and the other wildlife that we cohabitate with on an already overcrowded planet.
According to Pew Research Center, 97% of Americans who own pets think of them as family members, while 51% of pet owners consider them equal to human family members.
However, the ASPCA estimates that 6.3 million are surrendered to shelters annually and of them, approximately 920,000 are euthanized. What a way to treat family, especially those that cannot self advocate.
The crisis that domesticated animals are facing can be solved with responsible breeding practices – including spaying and neutering – meticulously vetted adoption policies, pauses on animal adoptions during periods of impulse buying, like holidays, and standard wait times between application and pet placement.
Some of our wildlife neighbors are much less fortunate. Pigeons, once used for delivering messages, are now seen as city vermin because developed communication technology renders them useless to us.
To make matters worse, pigeons are unable to nest effectively in the very cities that they were once welcomed. So why not seek better environments? Because pigeons rely on humans to provide them with food, according to the Internet Center for Wildlife Damage Management.
What’s more is that we fail to treat other animals – who still hold value to us – in humane ways. Many people who choose to be vegan do so in protest of harmful agricultural practices such as tail docking, dehorning, hot-iron branding, castration and debeaking, all of which are performed legally and without anesthesia or pain relief according to the Animal Welfare Institute.
Overcrowding is another trademark of livestock agriculture, but it hardly gets better for free-roaming wildlife. As we continue to demand more and more green space for roadways and real estate, nature is left with no choice but to evict animals like deer, raccoons and opossums, who later become roadkill.
With new construction, we disturb even the most unnoticed ecosystems – the organisms that dwell in dirt. Creatures like spiders, roaches and small rodents are displaced into human-centric spaces and then killed with harsh chemicals and glue traps for existing.
So no, dogs, cats and other household pets are not being eaten, but that’s hardly a feat worth celebrating in relation to other everyday animal cruelties across the U.S.