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.

More on a ‘Don’t Shop – Adopt’ Hypocrisy

Why is it hypocrisy? Because the animal rescue propaganda conveniently omits one very important issue: What will happen to that puppy in the pet shop or offered on the Internet?

Ok, let’s suppose that animal rescuers got their way and you adopted a pet from the shelter ignoring the cuties in the pet store and all the Internet ads. And that everyone else did the same. What will happen to the store and Internet puppies that are already there? The now unwanted puppies?

In most cases, they will go straight… to animal shelters. And as everyone has already adopted an animal from the shelter, there will be no adoption for all these puppies (of which there are exactly as many as adopted animals). Which means that to make room for surrendered animals, strays and feral animals, these puppies will have to be euthanized. Killed. Murdered.

Which means that – contrary to what animal rescue propaganda want you to believe – you have not saved a single animal. Not one. And you couldn’t have. You can save no animal; you can only choose which one will live and which one will die. It is either the one in the store/ad or in the shelter. Cut and dry, plain and simple.

The choice is yours (it is usually money vs. risks), but remember. Whatever you do, you DO NOT save an animal. You only choose which one will live.

Animal rescue propaganda want you to believe that the only way to shut down puppy mills is to stop buying puppies and adopting instead. Bullshit. Puppy mills MUST be shut down, of course (they are an abomination and a disgrace to humanity), but there are far more efficient and realistic ways to do it.

The first one (already proven) is to convince all pet stores to stop selling puppies. By proving to them (with financial numbers) that it will be far more profitable for them to do it (in terms of store brand value). But even then there will be Internet sales.

The second way is to convince local, state and federal governments to pass tough laws regulating raising, transporting and selling pets (and extremely tough penalties for breaking these laws). And give animal rights organizations the right to search for and enter the premises of these mills at any time. Violators must be arrested (and given long jail sentences), their pets confiscated and the mills destroyed.

The public can not end the puppy mills nightmare. Only the government can. And must.

Angora Wool Industry Rabbit Torture (video)

This short video is shocking even by the very graphic and rather shocking standards of this blog.

Angora hair or Angora fiber refers to the downy coat produced by the Angora rabbit. Angora is known for its softness, thin fibers, and what knitters refer to as a halo (fluffiness). It is also known for its silky texture. It is much warmer and lighter than wool due to the hollow core of the angora fiber. It also gives them their characteristic floating feel. Angora wool, known to be softer than cashmere, is one of the most sought after materials for those soft, warm sweaters so many people desire.

90% of Angora fur is produced in China, although Europe, Chile and the United States also produce small quantities. While rabbits are kept in horrifying conditions on every rabbit farm, Angora rabbits in China are forced to endure truly unspeakable ordeals.

In the angora wool industry, workers often violently rip the fur out of rabbits’ sensitive skin. Rabbits frequently scream out in pain. After this terrifying and barbaric ordeal, which the rabbits endure every three months, many of them appear to go into severe shock. After two to five years, those who have survived are hung upside down, their throats are slit, and their carcasses are sold for meat. These are standard conditions for angora rabbits in China.

Why do they rip the fur out? For a very simple reason: money. Plucking yields longer hairs, and thus more valuable yarn, and is quicker to do.

After the first such video surfaced in 2013 (it immediately went viral), several clothing retailers suspended the sourcing of products containing Angora wool. Major retailers that banned angora products in response to welfare concerns include Gap Inc., Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, H&M and Esprit. I think it was a good and ethically responsible thing to do – and the only way to put an end to these horrors.

Nurse Mare Foals (video)

This is a moral problem that 99.99% of Americans (or any other nation, for that matter) have never heard of. Technically, it is not about pets – it is about horses. More specifically, the race horses breeding industry. And, therefore, about money. And what a human being is capable of to make as much money as possible. And what it does to animals in the ‘care’ of these ‘humans’.

To make as much money as possible, a race horse breeder must produce as many horses as possible. Naturally, mares (female horses) will give birth to a foal every couple years or so.  Not in the horse racing industry.  For some, once the mare gives birth the foal (baby horse) is taken away from their mother to be raised as a race horse.  The mare will then be impregnated again and the cycle goes on and on. Until the mare can no longer produce and is mercilessly sent to the slaughterhouse. Same shit as one can find in puppy mills.

The foals that are taken from their mother are often put with a nurse mare in order to get their milk.  The problem with that is in order for the nurse mare to lactate and provide milk for the expensive future race horse, she had to have just given birth to her own foal (labeled the nurse mare foal).

So what happens to that foal? Since it is illegal to send foals under six months to the slaughterhouse, the latter foal is usually killed or discarded and left to starve to death.

What can we do to stop this slaughter? Tightly regulate the whole nurse mare thing and make sure that every nurse mare orphan is delivered into the care of a horse rescue (fortunately, there are plenty of these in the USA).