America holds its own version of the Yulin Dog Meat Festival. Every. Single. Day.

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If you have been to the grocery recently, you may have noticed a significant increase in the price of eggs. This is due to an egg shortage in the United States. A widespread outbreak of bird flu is sweeping across the midwest, mostly detected in large commercial flocks in 15 states. Iowa, the top egg producing state in the US has been the hardest hit. The United states Department of Agriculture and Plant Science Health Inspection Service has so far recorded over 48 million affected birds, all of which have either died from the disease or have been euthanized.

This outbreak of bird flu, considered the worst in US history, will cost much more than the doubled price of a carton of eggs. The Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, has said that government spending to fight the outbreak may climb as high as $500 million (with the private sector spending much more than that).

While the disease spreads like wildfire through the crowded conditions of factory farms, backyard flocks have been left largely unaffected. Corinne Gould, Communications Director for the Tennessee Department of Agriculture was quoted as saying “there aren’t any large-scale commercial egg producers [in Tennessee],” a state that has not yet reported a single case of bird flu.

Consumers are noticing this discrepancy. The Guardian reported that the increased egg prices have, in fact, led to many consumers shying away from factory farmed goods and buying specialty eggs, such as cage-free and organic. The Food Marketing Institute also reported on an increase in consumer concern regarding animal welfare. According to their annual study of US grocery shopper trends:

Among other trends, shopper interest in animal welfare has been consistently growing of late and appears to be picking up momentum. Consumers increasingly indicate an interest in the way animals are treated by companies who make their food and beverage products. And among consumer expectations of retailers, when it comes to attributes beyond those that render personal benefits, shoppers prioritize animal welfare second only to employment practices. Since 2013, the number of consumers who say it is important that their grocery store practice animal welfare has grown from 17% to 21%.

This re-prioritization of values places animal welfare in the top ten “most important retailer attributes” for consumers. This means that “animal welfare must now therefore be considered as a shopper value that retailers need to manage towards, as it rivals and surpasses several environmental-orientated benefits that stores have endeavoured to make visible for its shoppers and communities.”

Retail giant Walmart has been in the news of late for acknowledging this trend in shopper values and adopting a new position on animal welfare. In a statement released last month, Kathleen McLaughlin, President of the Walmart Foundation and the company’s Senior Vice President of Sustainability, said that “Walmart is committed to selling products that sustain people and the environment. We have listened to our customers, and are asking our suppliers to engage in improved reporting standards and transparency measures regarding the treatment of farm animals.”

The flames of the animal welfare debate were further stoked this month with outcry from the West regarding the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in Guangxi, China. A petition hosted on Change.org garnered over 4 million supporters, urging the Chinese government to put an end to the event, in which dogs were . They did not.

Factory farmed chickens, via Wikimedia Commons

You’d be hard pressed to find an American or European who denies that the Yulin Festival is a gross practice of animal cruelty. But the moral outrage from westerners highlights an obvious hypocrisy. The Chinese citizens who took part in the Yulin Festival are conditioned by their culture, and so are we. The eating of dog meat, in general, would be frowned upon in most, if not all, western cultures as we view dogs as companions, pets and friends — not as food. However, our culture not only accepts but lionizes the eating of pigs, despite the fact that pigs are arguably just as smart as dogs. Similarly, Hindus in India would no doubt find our affinity for cow meat abhorrent. Independent from culture, it makes very little difference what kind of animal meat one chooses to eat.

Therefore, for the meat-eaters among us, the real outrage regarding the Yulin Festival is not that dogs were eaten. The outrage lies in the fact that the dogs, like our chickens, cows and pigs, were brutally mistreated before being eaten. As comedian Ricky Gervais put it, bluntly:

Dear Morons, stopping the #YulinDogMeatFestival is less to do with them being dogs & more to do with them being tortured and skinned alive.

— Ricky Gervais (@rickygervais) June 17, 2015

Americans consume over twice as much as meat per person as the Chinese. And as noted in The Huffington Post, “factory farms raise 99.9 percent of chickens for meat, 97 percent of laying hens, 99 percent of turkeys, 95 percent of pigs, and 78 percent of cattle currently sold in the United States.” It is incredibly likely that every American citizen who eats meat has been complicit in mistreatment of animals on the order of the Yulin Dog Meat Festival.

What’s more, the Yulin Festival only happens once a year. Animals are tortured in US factory farms every single day.

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