China's Dog Meat Trade

[Guest guest]

China's Dog Meat Trade

 

The shocking truth that shames the Olympic hosts

 

A Disturbing One Voice Investigation

 

China's multi­billion dollar clean­up of Beijing ahead of its 2008

summer Olympic Games has been widely publicised. Eager to stage

a " green " Games and present a new face to the watching world, the

authorities have accomplished 20 environmental targets in Beijing

including relocating 200 factories to reduce the city's chronic air

pollution and building a wind farm on its outskirts.

 

Far less well known is Beijing's pre­Olympics closure of its many dog

meat restaurants. But then, these are places the Chinese authorities

are anxious that the wider world does not see.

 

Common in cities across China, these roadside restaurants specialise

in dishes made of almost every conceivable part of dogs including

heads, legs, testicles and innards. The animals destined to be killed

for the table are often kept on display outside restaurants in

cramped cages....

 

http://www.evana.org/index.php?id=30960 & lang=en

[Guest guest]

>Far less well known is Beijing's pre-Olympics closure of its many dog

>meat restaurants. But then, these are places the Chinese authorities

>are anxious that the wider world does not see.

 

 

Several attempts have been made to quantify the numbers of

dog meat restaurants in the Beijing area. The counts made by various

people have been quite consistent since the mid-1980s, showing a

range from about 95 to a peak of 114, almost all of them very small

and obscure, with a declining trend in recent years. This is among

more than 14,000 legally operating restaurants and thousands of

others operating without permits.

 

 

 

>Common in cities across China

 

Again, quite a number of people have documented the

visibility of the dog meat trade in various parts of China.

 

Every time a report comes in that stipulates a location, I

mark it on a map. Over the years, the named locations have tended

to be overwhelmingly in the Guangdong region and the border areas to

the extreme south.

 

Many reports have also come from small cities north and west

of Shanghai, but citing much smaller numbers of dogs and customers.

Scattered reports come from the areas close to Korea.

 

Very few reports come from most other areas, even when

western reporters are visiting often and looking for things to write

about.

 

The reports that do come in from some of these regions tend

to be along the lines of " Several migrant workers were caught killing

a dog to eat and were arrested, " or were beaten by locals.

 

 

 

The preponderance of evidence suggests that as keeping pet

dogs increases in China--and China already has at least twice as many

people keeping pet dogs as any other nation--cultural opposition to

eating dogs will increase from the present level of mild general

disapproval to non-acceptance.

 

Dog-eating is meanwhile already relatively isolated, not

" common in cities across China, " and is scarcely a staple of diet

anywhere, in part because it is very expensive relative to other

meats.

 

Successful campaigning will work within China to further

isolate and discourage dog-eating wherever it occurs, in support of

the fast-growing numbers of local animal advocates.

 

Externally bashing the whole of China, as the new One Voice

campaign appears to be doing, is merely repeating an old mistake.

That some people in China do X-Y-Z scarcely means that China does

X-Y-Z, any more than that the U.S. harbors some coonhunters and

dogfighters means that the U.S. is a nation of coonhunters and

dogfighters.

 

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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