Have you ever asked yourself why? Pigs are roughly comprable to dogs in intelligence[1], yet we eat them by the millions. There is little ethical distinction here - instead purely a cultural one.
[1] http://animalstudiesrepository.org/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...
To my surprise it seems that horses in the US still become food at some point. They first have to be shipped to Mexico, where it is legal to slaughter and butcher them for meat, but not to consume them. The meat is shipped to Asia and Europe where the consumption is acceptable and legal.
The commonly cited reason behind horse meat being illegal is that horses are given drugs throughout their lives that may make their meat unfit for consumption. Yet there are no provisions for consuming horse meat that is raised like normal livestock. Indeed, whenever horse meat becomes an issue in the US, activists take action, which lends credence to the idea that the ban is more moralistic than a regular safety precaution.
The idiotic part is that this doesn't prevent horses from being slaughtered and eaten. Instead, horses are shipped thousands of miles to Mexico, where many die due to the heat on the journey, before being slaughtered anyway. All I wanted was to try what I've read described as "like very lean beef"
I totally think that this 'eat animal' 'pet animal' thinking is beyond stupid and only shows how limited we humans think.
As someone else have pointed out there is no legitimate economic reason to raise dogs for food due to their being carnivores. If people are starving to death then sure, eat dogs to survive. Otherwise my point above stands.
Pigs may be smart, but they have no such special relationship with humanity beyond being domesticated for food. Killing a pig is not killing an animal whose brain is physiologically structured to love you. And while I personally eat pork & beef, I don't necessarily think that people who view it as abhorrent are wrong. 95% of animal consumption in today's world is abhorrently wasteful and destructive. I will gladly eat lab grown meat when it's widely available and of acceptable quality, which can't come soon enough.
[0] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/348/6232/333
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_the_domestic_dog