Letters to the Editor
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Also not so cool.
Harvesting organs from politcal prisoners who are kept alive until a match is found and a deal made.
But HET!, What the hell! It is good for business.
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SUGGESTION TO ALL HUMANS EVERYWHERE!
Suggestion to all humans everywhere:
EAT HUMAN BEINGS! (Not animals, whether those be cows or pigs or dogs or cats or chickens or geese or ducks)
Just a few years of this kind of diet, and we would most likely have solved the global warming and resource depletion problems.
As to which human beings would be 'best for table':
US citizens are unquestionably the best-fed of all human beings. There are 300-odd million of them.
There are 1000 million Indians - but more than 40% of these live below a disgraceful poverty line of just a couple of dollars a day and are severely malnourished - so Indians are way too bony, scrawny and tough to make eating any enjoyment at all.
The Chinese are far better nourished by Indians. There are about 1200 million Chinese in China, I understand.
The US and China should suffice to feed the whole world for quite a few days or even maybe years - and the best thing would be that we'd surely have solved the global energy and resource problems as well!
-- GSC
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pets or meat?
i most definitely agree there is problem with animals being rounded up and killed for food or fur or just a general "cleaning" sweep. there are many many strays in shanghai where i live. and many pets. and many times when it comes time to "sweep" the pets are picked up w/ the strays. we keep our 2 shanghai rescued cats INDOORS. and left the dog in america (w/ family). i've seen those pictures. i know what happens. it leaks out even w/in and behind our great firewall.
but it's a great leap from pets to meat. the author w/ his few days of backcountry skiing experience assumes too much from his first china trip.
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Everyone can help
I hope everyone who has any cultural or familial connection to China or Asia reads this article and is moved by it enough to put continual pressure in all possible ways to change the attitudes and practices recounted here.
To say that dogs and cats don't matter if people are suffering misses the point that a culture of indifference to suffering of this nature, especially of beings who are so connected to human society over many many many centuries, is of the same kind and is a symptom of the same sanctioned and militant cruelty of the powerful over the weak. If there is a way of opening hearts to understanding that affirming a culture of pain for the weak is bad for everyone, human and animal alike, it will do much to turn on the light of humane treatment of all those who are weak, both human and animal, pet and domesticated alike everywhere and especially in China where it now there are no limits to the cruelty at all and it is culturally sanctioned.
China was able to move away from such practices as foot binding and the worst of the inequalities between men and women, which seemed totally entrenched in the culture, as well as abandoning the expensive experiment they conducted in a particularly terrible form of totalitarian communism, so there is no reason to believe that China could not be moved to abandon these attitudes and practices too. Obviously there is a long way to go for all of us, but I think that if everyone who has any connection through relatives or business or culturally with China or Asia speaks out clearly and pressures in any way they can, it will have a huge impact on what the future will be like for many.
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re: It is not our place to campaign for Chinese people to cease eating dogs and cats.
Maybe not YOURS - it's CERTAINLY not YOUR place telling anyone what THEIR place is...
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Not that black and white
I have lived in China for an extended period, and although I have been in a restaurant where one of the posters clearly said "dog," I have never been served or offered dog as food, ever. I shared an apartment with a Chinese woman, and she loved dogs and cats just as much as I do. She's never eaten dog (or cat) either.
One time in Beijing I was taking a taxi with a driver who was clearly hostile to foreigners, but when I asked him if he liked animals he lit up and started talking about his three dogs. How old they were, their names, everything.
Yes, there is cruetly to animals in China. On busy shopping streets like at Wu Dao Kou you'll find people selling puppies too young to be away from their mother, there are animals in small cages in pet shops, and animals for the most part are not put to sleep in a humane way. But please, don't make it out like all Chinese are indifferent towards animals or their pets. If you look up the words for "animal rights" in Chinese (动物权利), you'll get more than 300 000 hits. Compared to the number of hits you'd get in English this isn't so much, but I still think it's saying a lot for a country where the Internet is cencored.
Another thing I would like to point out is that the collie in the article was able to run around freely before being killed. That's more freedom than what most farm animals are allowed.
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China & Dogs
Reading Ted Kerasote's experience of being served a dinner of the dog he befriended is like a Stephen King horror tale, except it's non fiction. I felt like I was slapped into reality. One of the many cultural bridges that some Chinese will have to address is that dogs and cats are special companions to humans and don't deserve such a horrific fate. Also, Americans need to treat animals raised to be slaughtered with more respect too. It's not a one way street, but to fully accepted by the rest of the world, the Chinese must reject and outlaw the killing of pets for food or fur.
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It would be awesome
If in the end it was our love for furry pets, not human rights, economic slavery or environmentalism or any of the real or human issues that eventually put a kink in the Olympics. Pets are People Too!