Eating cows as opposed to dogs is on a behavioral level nothing more than an arbitrary difference, a personal or cultural habit that in some societies is so normalized that it would shock, offend, or deeply worry some people to think about whether eating dogs or some other random animal is morally permissible. They either never contemplate such norms or just make assumptions. If they do object to eating some animals specifically, they likely hold to popular contemporary objections rooted in ideas about which animals have which kind of consciousness, with eating the ones that appear to have more significant intelligence getting more strongly discouraged. Of course, one cannot know that even animals that act as if they are thinking really have consciousness at all, though this is even true of fellow humans. The very existence of minds besides one's own is utterly unverifiable and unfalsifiable. This is a truth that still would not change whether it is or is not evil to eat meat at all or just meat from certain creatures, but the unknowability of whether other minds exist is very relevant to animal rights.
Outward observation can never prove anything except that one is perceiving these outward observations. For humans and non-human animals, a being with my limitations could only know if they seem to be conscious or seem to be particularly intelligent as individual animals. Even then, the only application of intelligence that truly has inherent weight is that of directly, intentionally understanding logical axioms and their ramifications, not the applications of intelligence for navigating the practicality of basic sensory experiences as so many people point to for animals. All conscious beings metaphysically and epistemologically rely on the supremely foundational laws of logic for everything, but a being that has the ability to directly grasp them and yet does not (or still chooses to believe and act irrationally) is not truly intelligent, human or otherwise. Noteworthy is that even in the Biblical worldview, which has the only moral system for which there is evidence (since there is genuine evidence suggesting Christianity is true) and which does repeatedly affirm that animals have moral rights, the condemnation of eating certain animals is not about whether they seem conscious or particularly intelligent.
Human consumption of dog meat is excluded by the Torah's dietary laws since dogs do not have cloven hoofs and chew their cud (Leviticus 11:1-3), but these obligations are the least important in the entire Bible and are some of the only ones that do not correspond to God's core nature and thus are not necessarily obligatory across all time periods. The New Testament occasionally appears on a cursory level to revoke these despite affirming the intrinsic obligations in many other parts of Mosaic Law, including the execution laws (Matthew 15:3-9). Whether or not these laws are universal like other commands of Mosaic Law and whether or not Christianity is true in the first place, the reasons why most people oppose eating some meat but not others (or meat altogether) are inherently fallacious. They often believe this based on conscience or culture. Now, it is vital to clarify that both abiding by various dietary norms of one's culture and personally abstaining from certain kind of meat are not necessarily irrational on their own, even if someone has not thought about it much or at all, for they might still be avoiding all assumptions and simply be focusing on more foundational and significant matters than diet.
For other people, perhaps they are just so accustomed to eating one type of animal but not another that this alone makes them feel moral or personal revulsion at the thought of consuming any animal outside of an arbitrary spectrum. Because of this strong emotion rooted in habit, they might genuinely think it is demonstrably true that it is morally permissible to eat some meat and evil to eat other kinds, although they can only assume this; they could not possibly know as long as they have human limitations. Everything from social pressures to subjective attachment to specific pets could influence what an irrational person believes about the moral nature of eating animals. Ultimately, arbitrarily choosing to eat some meat as opposed to others is not irrational in light of the inescapable ignorance of whether eating certain animals' meat is morally charged apart from something like Mosaic Law. Believing that one's preferences or cultural practices have epistemological authority or make anything true is the idiocy.
There is no way a person could logically prove if eating animals, unnecesarily or not, is universally immoral, and this is why people inevitably object to it on the basis of emotion, cultural norms, or personal preferences. This is why someone might not just feel disgusted by the eating of dogs, but also irrationally believe they know this is evil rather than that they only have a preference that cannot be proven to correspond to moral obligations. This is why the same kind of person might rage against eating dogs while regularly eating meat from cows or pigs. While the dietary laws of the Torah clearly distinguish between eating dogs or cows without ever once mentioning how elaborate the consciousness of certain animals is supposed to be, there is nothing but the irrelevance of preference to cling to in secular or personal beliefs that human consumption of meat is evil.
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