Letters to the Editor
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Dogs in China
Please don't assume that all Chinese eat dogs!
I have friends in NanNing, GuangXi Province, who I visit frequently (I live in adjacent VietNam) and there are many who have dogs as household pets.
On one occasion I jokingly said to a dog owner: "Yum, yum" looking at her dog which immediately resulted in a look of shock as she explained that her dog was not for eating!
Dogs, both in many parts of China and VietNam, are bread for eating - they don't just grab any mutt off the street for lunch which what others do with cows, sheep and pigs.
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You need to warn people
Some of us get very upset at animal cruelty, and don't like to hear graphic descriptions of animal mutilation. Personally, I'm probably going to have nightmares about your article tonight. That might not bother you, because I'm sure that you care more about getting your point across than my feelings, but I think you could have gotten your point across more gently, or if you couldn't then the article could have had some kind of warning for people who have pets and get unreasonably upset at the thought of dogs being harmed.
Actually - thinking more about this, I'm really more offended. If you wrote an article like this about humans, you would never have treated the readers so brutally, but you purport to think of dogs as "friends", which makes me think that you realize how important they are in our lives. There is no excuse for this kind of writing. You would never talk about a human being cut open.
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Your normality, my barbarity
I wonder if the author has ever watched a wildlife documentary? One with wolves "cruelly" separating a young animal from the herd, running it into the ground (its eyes wild, its nostrils flaring with terror) and then eating it alive, utterly immune to its cries of pain?
Not the same thing? Are humans not animals, then?
I wonder if the author is aware that most Chinese that I have spoken to about the topic view the American practice of shipping grandma and grandpa off to a nursing home at their most vulnerable time, to die surrounded by indifferent strangers, as utterly barbaric and unfeeling?
Not the same thing? I love you, Mom, but not enough to care for you like you cared for me. It's just not _convenient_. This is more "humane" than eating a dog?
I wonder if the author would deny drugs to his children, if said drugs had been tested or developed using animals?
Not the same thing? So there's a calculus of animal suffering?
"Human" and therefore "humane" is quite simply a bigger and more complex beast than simply "the stuff that Ted Kerasote feels comfortable with".
Animals of all kinds have been food for the entirety of human history. Which doesn't make it right. Which doesn't make it not cruel. But it does make it a complex issue that is intertwined deeply with who we are as tribal, cultural, regional, social human beings. Your barbarity is my normality, and vice versa.
It is a complex issue that is not served by this inaccurate, sexed-up "one anecdote and a bunch of guesswork" article. Really, this is an amazingly low-rent attempt to tie diet preferences -- and Ted Kerasote's personal beliefs about them -- to the Olympics (I mean, really, could any two things be _less_ connected?!).
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Petition to save Beijing Cats being killed for the Olympics
I'm so glad that this article was written. One of the things that the Chinese are doing in preparation for the Olympics is rounding up cats and leaving them to die in small cages. Please sign this petition to get the information about this killing on the mass media.
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/stop-the-beijing-olympics-cat-massacre
And yes I care about people, too and yes, I am a vegan, so I don't see the US as superior in all aspects of animal issues. (Sorry just trying to head off the "rote" attacks on animal rights activists.)
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This story is fake, (and I have a problem with Edziu's post)
First of all, I don't believe this whole thing really happened. It is too theatrical. Chinese people to not make a show of killing their food. They do not bring out gutted dogs to the dinning table. （They sometimes do show live animals before the meal though）. Chinese people working at a ski resort would probably also be relatively international-ized and realize that foreigners don't eat dog. And for that matter, dog is usually only served in restaurants that specialize in it. And like another reader pointed out, "food" dogs are bred for their food value...they would not just take a dog off the street. Certainly not a big, expensive dog like a Collier. Oh...and it takes a while to skin and clean a dog. Then the meat is usually prepared in a slow-cooked stew. Its just not the type of animal that is butchered right before the meal as the author describes in this article.
If this whole thing actually did happen, then the problem is not with Chinese people, but with the company that the author kept. Or it was a different dog. And furthermore, “pity” would not be the feeling or expression on the Chinese host’s face. Mortal shock due to extreme loss-of-face for insulting a guest at the dinner table is what would have happened.
Edziu's Muze wrote:
It makes a difference in thus discussion that domestic animals are killed in these ways. Forever, they have been bred to befriend and develop comfortable relationships with humans. They do suffer horrific pain in many cases before actually dying and anyone who could do that, for a "special meal" or any other cultural habit is missing a compassion gene or two.
The author did not write that the animal was alive while gutted, and in any case, that is not how anyone prepares any food animal (except maybe some types of sushi).
I don't see how a dog can have more pain than a cow before dying. Their pain is from being slaughtered is not greater. In fact, (and I'm speculating here) since dogs are not slaughtered in a slaughterhouse factory, the dogs are much less likely to sense "the end is near" compared to chicken and cows, which are forced to morbidly walk into their “death box” by the thousands. And BTW, dogs have not been bred for their companionship...they were bred to work for humans...just as cows and horses have been bred.
I find that this article is insulting and fake. But I think suggestions that Chinese people are missing a "compassion gene or two" to be even more insulting and lacks intelligent analysis.