Banned Dog Meat Served In Beijing
3:49pm UK, Friday August 22, 2008
Alex Watts, In China
Restaurants in Beijing are continuing to serve dog meat despite an Olympic ban on the infamous dish.
Alex manages to sample at least one mouthful of the dog meat dish
Officials red-carded the food because they were worried about upsetting tourists visiting the capital during the Beijing Games.
But Sky News found five Beijing restaurants still serving the dish, and went along to visit one of them in the north-west of the city.
Da Cheng Jiu Jia, which in English means Big Honest Restaurant, specialises in dog meat, serving up everything from dog hot pot to fried dog's penis.
We bought a bowl of poodle, I mean noodle soup, with a generous handful of poached dog meat scattered over the top, for 60 yuan - £5 - and a plate of stir-fried dog in chilli sauce for £2.50.
The dishes didn't go down very well
The staff expressed little surprise that a foreigner was ordering the meat - despite the Olympic ban - and were more concerned about how incompetently I was handling my chopsticks.
The fried dog meat was revolting, and even though the fiery sauce managed to cover up most of the flavour, neither me nor my Chinese translator managed more than a mouthful.
But the poached dog meat was far worse. It is difficult to draw comparisons. The closest description I can muster is putrid pork, with a stringy texture similar to well-stewed beef.
I managed a mouthful of each, purely for research purposes, and was glad I'd ordered a plate of spinach and fried vegetables to help it down.
The owner showed no surprise when we left most of our meal - and in case you're wondering she didn't offer us a doggy bag.
She told my translator they did not know where the dog had come from, or what breed it was, but said it was bought from a wholesaler outside Beijing.
"We buy it in bags," she said." It is a mixture of different types of dog. Big ones and small ones."
Sky News found five places to buy dog
Animal rights groups have slammed the dog meat trade in China, and said the Olympic ban was simply a cosmetic move to try to clean up the city's image for foreign visitors.
Earlier this year, Sky News told how investigation agency Ecostorm gained access to the industry by posing as businessmen and secured pictures of dogs being brutally killed with clubs and knives.
The images showed the animals taking up to seven minutes to die before they are boiled and skinned.
They said is was one of the worst examples of animal-abuse they have ever seen.During the 1988 Seoul Olympics, South Korea also banned dog from menus.
posted by DAPHNE D. @ 3:30 PM
1 Comments:
At September 24, 2008 at 10:13 PM ,
Ken Hopes said...
The ban on dog meat is a reaction to western speciesist thinking in which it’s considered acceptable to eat some types of animals (like pigs and turkeys), but downright horrific to eat other types (dogs). This attitude is based on our cultural tradition of viewing certain animal species as food, and others as cute and cuddly companions.
However, looking at the situation more objectively, dogs and pigs—along with humans—all share the capacity for emotion, and the desire to avoid pain, suffering, and death. They all have unique personalities and exhibit self-awareness and curiosity. In other words, other than the fact that some of them are not human, all of them essentially conform to the definition of “person”. From a moral standpoint, eating dogs is no better or worse than eating cows, chickens, pigs, or fish. That seeing dogs listed on restaurant menus in Beijing may offend or upset foreign visitors, says more about western speciesism than China’s comparative level of civilization and modernity.
Even if this ban covered all of China, and was permanent rather than temporary, I would not support it. Anyone who considers themselves to be supportive of animal rights, who favors this or similar measures, ought to stop and reconsider. In much the same way that banning capital punishment for white people would fuel racism and strengthen the concept of white supremacy, this ban does little other than to reinforce speciesism and the concept of dogs as “special”. It has no practical effect, as restaurant patrons who might have ordered dog flesh will most likely substitute some other species of animal on the menu. Nor does it represent incremental progress, as there is no intention of making the ban permanent, expanding it to other parts of China, or broadening it to include other animal species, milk, eggs, and other uses of animals. In this instance like so many others that abolitionists are critical of, the idea that exploiting animals is wrong, is not lost; it’s not even addressed.
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