The mutts were destined for the dinner table - all 520 of them crammed onto a truck hurtling down a Beijing highway toward waiting restaurants in northeastern China.In China, poor people have been eating dogs for a long time and keeping a pet dog is an activity associated with the rich. Rescuing dogs might seem to us like championing the weak, but in China, the strong vs. weak argument is flipped, because the dog eaters are the poor, and the dog lovers are the pet-owning rich. Or so it seems.
Then fate intervened in the form of a passing driver, an animal lover who spotted the truck and angrily forced it off the road.
From there, things began spiraling out of control. News of the confrontation hit the Chinese blogosphere, sending more than 200 animal activists flocking immediately to the highway. Traffic on the road slowed to a standstill. Dozens of police officers were called in. Animal activists, however, kept arriving with reinforcements, carrying water, dog food, even trained veterinarians for a siege that ended up lasting 15 hours....
The mob of dog lovers finally won the standoff by pooling together more than $17,000 to pay off the truck driver. But their victory was quickly eclipsed when they soon realized they had no idea where to house the hundreds of loud, wild and decidedly not-housebroken canines....
[D]og transporter Hao Xiaomao said he lost a small fortune, more than $3,000, after being forced into the deal. Worst of all, because he failed to deliver, no one has been willing to hire him since.
"I still don't understand what was immoral about my shipment. People also eat cow and sheep. What's the difference?" he asked. "They were just a group of rich bullies who own pets and have nothing better to do."...
June 12, 2011
Dog Fight in China.
It's eaters vs. lovers in a melee on the highway:
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And just what is wrong with eating dog?
I've eaten it and it is OK, flavorwise.
I see no more moral issue than eating cow, pig, horse, chicken etc.
John Henry
I am prone to gout. If I eat beef meat my big toe swells up like a grapefruit.
Does anyone know if dogmeat is OK for gout sufferers?
John Henry
The worst thing is that after these dog-lovers saved the dogs from death, there was no way to turn them into the pets that the dog-lovers pictured. The dogs are only suffering. They were brought into the world to be raised for meat, and treated accordingly. There isn't a way to re-channel them into pet life. And it's not fair to the business owner who relied on a traditional, legal form of commerce. It's vandalism.
Eating dog is now illegal in the Philippines, but it used to be common.
Still happens in the distant provinces.
Filipinos joke about it a lot. When I was in Cebu, a stray dog often stopped by to beg for scraps when we ate on the patio. Many jokes about grabbing the poor bastard and the best way to cook him.
Here's one of my favorite recipes: Stewed Dog (wedding style).
And, it's not only dogs that can tug at your heartstrings. My late wife, a Filipino, often told me the story of her pet goat. Her father gave it to her when she was very young. She either didn't understand or wasn't told the goat's fate.
Her heart was broken when Dad slaughtered the goat and served it for dinner.
Althouse, I'd both agree and disagree with what you have to say.
First, rich city dwellers idealize animals in a way that poor rural peasants don't.
But, dogs are remarkably adaptable. I'm not so sure about the fate of the dogs. Some of them most certainly can become fully domesticated house broken pets.
Ridiculous. Imagine if some fool forced a cattle truck off the road in righteous indignation.
I say PETA should embark en masse tp Beijing and give those f*cking ChiComs "what for"
A future Animal Planet series?
for some reason this reminded me of this:
"The sight of the dog put a wild idea into his head. He remembered the tale of the man, caught in a blizzard, who killed a steer and crawled inside the carcass, and so was saved. He would kill the dog and bury his hands in the warm body until the numbness went out of them. Then he could build another fire. He spoke to the dog, calling it to him; but in his voice was a strange note of fear that frightened the animal, who had never known the man to speak in such way before. Something was the matter, and its suspicious nature sensed danger—it knew not what danger, but somewhere, somehow, in its brain arose an apprehension of the man. It flattened its ears down at the sound of the man's voice, and its restless, hunching movements and the liftings and shiftings of its forefeet became more pronounced; but it would not come to the man. He got on his hands and knees and crawled toward the dog. This unusual posture again excited suspicion, and the animal sidled mincingly away."
What's the difference? A dog has got peronality. Personality ges a long way.
The cultural battle described in the article between rich spoiled urban Chinese and poor rural peasants mirror the battle between the spoiled brats of Madison and the decent middle class folks in the stix, doesn't it?
The spoiled brats in Madison don't believe that there is a price for their indulgences.
The folks out in the stix know better.
In Woodstock, we have the Farm Animal Sanctuary.
Our spoiled brats are proving what angels they are by "rescuing" farm animals from slaughter and raising them in their little Garden of Eden.
Cults have gone way downhill since I arrived in Woodstock. Back in the good old days, the Rajneeshees were the big cult. They believe in salvation through orgies.
Several years ago a popular Chinese restaurant in Connecticut closed abruptly. Rumor had it that the health department had found out it was serving cat.
Peter
OpenID ironrailsironweights said...
Several years ago a popular Chinese restaurant in Connecticut closed abruptly. Rumor had it that the health department had found out it was serving cat.
Peter'
I heard about that. The restaurant was called 'The Silver Spoon'. Somebody even wrote a ballad about it..'The Cat's In The Ladle At Silver Spoon'.
"And just what is wrong with eating dog?"
There is a social contract between man and dog that doesn't exist with other animals, (other than horses, maybe). Eating them is a violation of the concept "man's best friend".
This is such an obvious point I'm amazed that it needs stating.
Mmmm Weiner dog!!
Eating them is a violation of the concept "man's best friend".
People treat dogs a helluva lot worse that clubbing them on the head and eating them. Like giving them a life alone in a kennel or chained out on a stake in the yard.
"But, dogs are remarkably adaptable. I'm not so sure about the fate of the dogs. Some of them most certainly can become fully domesticated house broken pets."
Read the whole article. That isn't what's happening. Any given dog might be transformed into a pet dog, but there are 520 dogs. They aren't even housebroken. People are not coming forward to adopt these dogs and try to make them into pets. They aren't pet dogs.
Only savages in savage cultures eat dogs.
Welcome to the People's Paradise, where they still have to eat the dogs.
Wasn't murdering 66 million people supposed to create a Socialist Utopia?
Was it on the way to the new food chain: "Poodles and Noodles"?
Rescuing dogs might seem to us like championing the weak, but in China, the strong vs. weak argument is flipped, because the dog eaters are the poor, and the dog lovers are the pet-owning rich.
Well, there is "the I now feel the need to carry around a toy dog with me everywhere because I’m feeling richer effect."
And it's not fair to the business owner who relied on a traditional, legal form of commerce. It's vandalism.
More like union extortion and what government does at every level to the private sector. Obama, for instance, and what happened to GM bondholders.
New born black puppy stewed in beans and herbs cures asthma. My brother's asthma was really bad and the docs could do nothing. He, however, was completely cured after feasting on black puppy stews a couple of times. That was more than forty years ago.
The little guys were bludgeoned to death to conserve their blood, then dipped in boiling water to strip their fur and save their eatable skin. It was ghastly.
"a social contract between man and dog"
Really? But the Chinese never signed that contract.
Where'll those "rescued" dogs go? To dog pounds, of course, then either euthanized "humanely" or "rescued" one more time from the pounds and sold to local restaurants.
Don't forget, the Chinese charge family of an executed prisoner the cost of the bullet, and keep political prisoners as organ transplant donors.
My wife used to work with a couple of Koreans ladies (not uncommon in IT), and they told her that the quintessential dog names in Korea, like "Spot" or "Rover" here, were "John" and "Mary".
They told her it was bit of culture shock to come to a place where lots of people were actually named John and Mary.
One lady reminisced that in her family it was an ongoing joke that the cure for a lack of meat in the larder was to go to the door and call out "John! Mary!".
I have no idea if they were pulling my wife's leg or not. I'm just reported the story as heard.
When I was in INdia there would wild dogs running around everywhere. Initially, I felt sorry for them because I fucking love dogs. Eventually, I saw there place in the country for what it is. People don't eat dog in India and there are very few pet dogs.
I love dogs so much.
Jef - "There is a social contract between man and dog that doesn't exist with other animals, (other than horses, maybe). Eating them is a violation of the concept "man's best friend".
This is such an obvious point I'm amazed that it needs stating."
Traditionally, Western man and the Islamoids didn't eat dog, but ate horse. And Asians happily ate both. The Africans too, though they were never a "horse culture" like the Asians and Muslims and West were for most of their history.
I have no problem with Asians eating stray dogs. Or us culling wild dog packs or euthanizing excess ones. I have a big problem with taking dogs clearly raised in a loving home and friendly and selling them for animal experimentation.
Horses are a different matter. The animal rights nuts are a little insane about this. Even in America, with all our surplus wealth and surplus of food, it was believed until recently it was enormously wasteful to let a couple hundred pounds of lean good-tasting meat go to waste, the useful horsehide, horsehair, and a dozen other uses. Only in recent decades have the animal rights activists emerged -
"First low-hanging fruit like no animal experimentation involving loved species, then horse killing bans, then our war to make Americans morally pure and Vegan goes to banning "factory farm meat".
The horse-lovers succeeded in passing laws in America in collusion with sappy-headed legislators to "ban horse slaughter!", ban sale of horsemeat...Like the Chinese dog lovers who liberated hundreds of unwanted feral dogs and had no idea what to do with the situation they created - the horse lovers found unexpected consequences. Owners shipped the horses to Mexico for slaughter. Horror videos emerged of Mexicans with spike fireaxes taking several blows to dispatch screaming retired race horses and riding school mares. The meat went to France, central Europe, China, and Muslim countries. The other products not intended for human consumption reimported into the US under NAFTA rules.
Boy howdy, nothing like a nice dog stew and big glass of Jack Spaniels.
That social contract comment above is silly.
Indians (Hindus) have a "social contract" with cows. Does that mean you guys should stop eating beef?
Nope. You didn't sign a 'social contract' with cows. Just like the chinese didnt' sign a social contract with dogs.
No one here is talking about eating your favorite chihuahua. The dogs here were bred for slaughter and consumption.
Notice our main food mammals are herbivores, probably due simply to economics; you'd have to go the extra step of raising some other animal as a food source for a carnivore. My guess would be the dogs in question were culled strays (and probably a few loose pets) rather than animals specifically raised for consumption.
I've had bear and raccoon (an omnivore), but didn't like either. Greasy.
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