Atrocious delicacies in China

Whenever there is atrocious news about food, it always seems to come from China.


A friend sent me photos (which I shall not reproduce here, because it took me two days before I dared look at the photos – you can probably google for them if you do a word search on “waxed dogs and cats in China”).


Yes, apparently, the Chinese in China capture dogs and cats, wax them and sell them as “delicacies” and the Chinese consumers eat them.


The photos are….very heart-wrenching, more so, to dog- and cat- lovers because they are all puppies and kittens. Yes, all baby animals.


We already know some Chinese eat dogs and cats (I hear there are even such restaurants in Puchong and other parts of KL though they are “underground”). There are more on mainland China as it’s done openly. A friend told me there is even a village in China whose specialty was cat noodles – he visited the place and being a meat-eater, he had no qualms in savouring the special noodle AND telling me about it later as he was slightly sadistic and enjoyed making me squirm.


Someone once lost her precious pet-dog and after futile searching and not being able to find the dog, but yet, the family wanted closure, she actually went to all the underground dog-restaurants she could find with a photo of her dog and asked if they had received any such dog. I cannot even begin to imagine the anxiety and pain she must have gone through in doing that. I hear she finally found her dog, safe and sound, and I cried tears of joy just reading the news. 


So, we come back to this story of Chinese in China waxing dogs and cats as delicacies or even Chinese anywhere in the world (maybe other races too, I don’t know) eating dogs and cats.


My vet would say, “okay, so we cry foul, but what about those who eat chickens, cows, goats, pigs, rabbits, etc., isn’t it the same?”


He’s right, you know.  


Some animal lovers claim that they love animals, yet some animals are called “pets” while others are called “food”.  


Once, I was looking for a vet for someone’s pet chicken and I rang several vets to ask if they could treat the chicken. One vet laughed and said, “No, I don’t treat them, I eat them!”


The final analysis here is that it’s sad when one is born an animal, isn’t it?  


Watch out for my next book, please – it’s being typeset now. It’s called “Do we have a choice?”. It encourages the reader to reduce her meat intake. Every bit of meat that we remove from our diet helps save some animals from being slaughtered. A meat-eater, on the average, would end up eating 11,000 animals in one lifetime, whether it’s pigs, cows, goats, chickens, rabbits, dogs or cats. That’s indirectly causing 11,000 deaths and untold suffering in the factory farms and fear under the knife.  


Let these animals not die in vain, let’s reflect upon their suffering for a moment now, see their pain with our hearts, and let’s go veggie this lunch, shall we? In Singapore, I hear many university students adopt a Veggie Thursday.  


Then, we can at least say, “Yes, I love animals, I even go veggie once a week (or several times a week), that’s how much I love them. I’m willing to sacrifice the pleasures of my tongue for their sake!”


An elderly couple once attended one of my talks, I don’t know what I said in that talk, but after that, they both decided to drop meat entirely from their diet and the husband wrote to tell me and thank me. I must have said something right….I wish I knew what it was!