An Excellent Video on the Indonesian Dog Meat Trade

Very rational, dispassionate, logical and professional. No ‘animal rights’ hysteria – just good old common sense

Dog Meat Trade and What (Not) to Do About It (video)

This issue is much more complex than animal rights propaganda would want you to believe. First, historically, dog meat has been consumed in in many parts of the world, including East and Southeast Asia, West Africa, Europe, Oceania and the Americas. And no one ever had any problems with that.

Second, it is not just China and Korea. In fact, more than twenty (!) countries around the globe still eat dog meat; however, in most nation dog meat consumption is usually confined to a few localities.

Dog meat is a delicacy; it is healthy and – if prepared properly, very tasty. It is not an everyday meat like chicken or pork – it’s a fragrant meat that’s enjoyed on special occasions. It’s an extremely fragrant red meat. Take a cross between beef and mutton, add extra meaty flavoring, and you’ve got the taste of a dog. It is so tasty and delicious that if it wasn’t for the “psychological thought of eating dog”, everyone would probably love it.

Third, most of the 25 million or so dogs consumed annually as meat worldwide, are NOT pets. They are the so-called Nureongi dogs – mid-sized with short yellow fur and melanistic masks that are bred specifically as food animals (i.e. fall into the ‘food animal’ category like pigs, meat rabbits, cows, sheep, goats, etc.). They are farm animals and never kept as pets.

True, the whole dog meat industry in China and Southeast Asia is cruel, barbaric, usually unsanitary and often criminal. In addition to farm-raised dogs, it uses stray and feral dogs and pet dogs (usually bought but sometimes stolen from their owners) which are often smuggled from other nations (e.g. from Thailand into Vietnam).

Acquired or stolen dogs are crammed into small cages and brought to a ‘transient camp’ where the ‘grade B’ dogs are immediately slaughtered for meat to be sold locally, ‘Grade A’ dogs are taken to the transient farms where they ae force-fed until they gain enough fat. After that, they are taken to markets in large cities, brutally slaughtered, skinned and sold as meat to major restaurants that serve this meal as a delicacy. Due to the inefficiencies of the slaughter process, dogs are sometimes thrown alive into a boiling water or into the hair-removing machine.

What should we do about this barbarity? Precisely nothing. A ‘war on dog meat trade’ declared by animal rights activists is even more stupid than the proverbial ‘war of drugs’. Because dog meat trade does not harm humans and even one human life is worth infinitely more than the lives of ALL dogs on Earth. Humans are – and always will be – superior to any and all animals.

Nobody is going to seriously harm the industry that serves millions of consumers (dog meat is consumed no more than several times a year), generates of billions of dollars in revenues and millions in taxes and creates tens of thousands of jobs in dirt-poor nations.

Besides, let’s supposed you have rescued 500 or so dogs (a typical size of wholesale dog shipment) from the dog traders. What are you going to do with these dogs? Where are you going to keep them? Who is going to pay for their food, shelter, spay/neuter, treating their diseases? 90% or so of these dogs are feral and farm dogs that are not adoptable (and there is no adoption tradition in dog-eating nations).

Therefore, you will either have to euthanize them (which makes your ‘rescue’ a total waste of time, effort and money) or to keep them in ‘dog’s jail’ for the rest of their lives (which is way worse than euthanasing them). Besides, it is totally immoral to spend a dime on dogs when millions of HUMANS in those nations live in horrible conditions and suffer immeasurably every day, hour and minute.

In time, the whole thing will gradually go away and the problem will take care of itself. Younger generations in dog-eating nations are becoming more and Westernized and less likely to consume dog’s meat. In China, in 2014, dog meat consumption went down by a third. Ten years from now, it will be all gone by itself.

Abused Dogs in China (video)

This is another perfect example of a bleeding heart ‘animal rights’ propaganda. Authors of the video created an emotional mess out of four very different issues: (1) brutal culling of feral dogs; (2) dog meat trade; (3) dog leather trade and (4) a virtually non-existent dog fur trade.

Let’s start with dog culling. Apparently, the Chinese animal control officials decided to save on poison and told its ‘death squads’ to just beat the feral dogs with sticks. Or just declared an ‘open season’ on feral dogs giving every citizen the right to kill every feral dog he or she encounters (such things do happen sometimes).

Now that’s a very barbaric (and inefficient) way to solve this problem. They are doing the right thing – killing the feral dogs – using the wrong method. Hence, we must praise the end and criticize the means. And not just criticize, but to offer a much better solution – catch and euthanize on the spot with a lethal injection.

Now the dog meat trade. Dog traders DO NOT take the culled dogs from animal control as it does not fit into their ‘business processes’. They either buy dogs from special ‘meat farms’ or obtain (buy or steal) pet dogs from their owners. These dogs are then force-fed until they gain enough weight to be sold to retailers for dog meat.

In dog leather business, entrepreneurs do not get dead dogs from animal control. They capture stray dogs (or steal/buy pets from owners) and slaughter and process the dogs themselves. In a very efficient manner, actually.

To get things straight, authors of the video should have kept these issues separate and offer solutions for each one. Unfortunately, putting an end to dog meat trade and dog leather business is impossible – the demand is still too high and there is too much money to be made. So any attempts at protesting are a waste of time, money and effort.

Chinese Man Choking the Dog to Death for Cooking (video)

This video shows a Chinese man slowly and patiently choking a dog to death with a catch pole. For food, not for fun (it does not seem he is having any fun doing it). Finally, he gets tired of waiting for the dog to die of asphyxiation and calls a friend or a relative to stun the dog with a blow to the head. After the dog is unconscious, he cuts the throat of a poor animal ending its suffering.

This is a perfect example of an enormous cultural difference between the Western civilization and the Chinese ‘dog-eating’ subculture (it is mostly a regional thing). Not all Chinese eat dog meat (dog eaters are, in fact, in the minority). For us, the process of killing the dog for food is an unacceptable brutality; in that culture it is no different from killing a rabbit, a cow, a pig or a chicken.

It is all a matter of perspective: we consider a dog a protected animal that simply can not be eaten; in that culture a dog is a livestock, a ‘walking food’. Should we do anything about it? I do not think so. In fact, I think that when a person buys himself a dog for food, slaughters it in about the same way as other animal, cooks and eats it – it is none of our business. Dog meat trade is an entirely different story, though.

Selling dog meat for consumption is legal in China and approximately 10 million dogs each year are slaughtered for consumption. About the same number is ‘euthanized’ in animal shelters in the USA with bodies usually incinerated or buried (i.e. wasted).

The eating of dog meat in China dates back thousands of years. Dog meat has been a source of food in some areas from around 500 B.C. and possibly even earlier. It has been suggested that wolves in southern China may have been domesticated specifically as a source of meat. Dog meat is thought to have medicinal properties, and is especially popular in cold winter months in northern China, as it is believed to raise body temperature after consumption and promote warmth.

In modern times, the extent of dog consumption in China varies by region, most prevalent in Guangdong, Yunnan and Guangxi, as well as the northern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning.

Cultural things, especially rooted in traditions dating back thousands of years, is impossible to change from the outside. Therefore, we must patiently wait (a very Chinese way to deal with a problem) for the situation to change by itself. And it is changing. Younger generations in China are getting more and more Westernized adopting the Western attitudes towards dogs and dog meat.

Not surprisingly, dog meat consumption is gradually declining or disappearing. In 2014, dog meat sales declined by a third compared to 2013.