New Mandala reader Rungnapa Kasemrat has sent me this image from the Vietnamese town of Van Phuc (famous for its silk production.) Travellers in Rungnapa’s group were pleased to learn that, given the high price of dog meat, substitution in any of the nearby restaurants was very unlikely! From my experience they were missing out on a treat.
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As a dog lover, I would just like to inform you, that without having any kind of warning of what I was going to see as I scrolled down, I am now left traumatized and morbidly disgusted.
When I get home tonight my dog is getting a few extra dog treats for no reason whatsoever.
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The worst thing about the consumption of dog and cat meat in Asia is the myths about eating it. Because adrenaline is believed to make the meat more potent for the person eating it, like Stacker or Viagra or something of the sort, the animals are basically tortured to death.
Cats are boiled alive to make cat soup. It’s a horrible process where the cat screams and tries to escape. It takes up to ten minutes for the animal to die.
Dogs on the other hand, are either beaten to death in a sack or on the street, or are hung from a tree and beaten to death. Sometimes they are still alive when the fur is burned off of them with a blow torch.
The longer it takes the animal to die, the more adrenaline in the meat, so the goal is to make them suffer as long as you can before their body gives out on them.
Fur from the cats and dogs are marked as rabbit, raccoon or fox and sold around the world, even in the U.S.
While this is not a site about Vietnam, http://www.koreananimals.org is a place where you can learn more about the plight of animals in Asian countries. You can also google it or read more at http://www.HSUS.org.
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I wish I was given a warning. I have completely lost the desire to eat for days. I love animals and this is flat out disgusting and cruel!!!! My cat is getting extra portions tonight and will get more attention from now on.
I will never eat Asian food again!!!
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Cat tastes kind of stringy.
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i hate seeing these photos, i am asian myself and i am embarrass wat is going on. As an animal lover myself .i am disguisted with how many people love to see animal tortured just for their own sake. SHAME ON THEM. I have 4 dogs and a rabbit, and i am glad my pets are save and love.
We need to help stop animal cruelty by supporting the RSPCA and WSPCA or any other animal organisation….Toegether we can do so much. HELP STOP CRUELTY!!!!!!
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Re: Richard, et al.
Yes, how dare people eat different food than we eat!!!
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that is disgusting…these animals have feelings…these people to me are next to murderers
just disgusting
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Opossums, cattle, pigs, monkeys, cats, dogs, guinea pigs, snakes, rats, baboons, alligators, sharks – eaten all over the world by different people and cultures.
Really, the only way to eat cat is to grill it real good, then smother it in tabasco sauce. And be really, really hungry.
Rat on a stick actually isn’t too bad. I believe there’s a youtube video of it being prepared and eaten in Viet Nam.
Babboon is rubbery tasting.
Bon appetit!!!
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Having been an expat in laos for several years and living in close proximity to a vietnamese dog farm where dogs were unfortunatley beaten to death for adrenal production, coming to terms with this method has been extremely hard.
Many friends, both expat and lao have had their dogs stolen and we all knew what happened to them and knowing that your pet and companion ended their lives this way is very traumatic.
While some people in some cultures treat animals this way, it is not ALL asian cultures, and indeed, not ALL Vietnamese or Chinese or Korean’s etc. Additionally, not all people who eat cat or dog treat these animals with cruelty and slaughter their animals as efficiently and painlessly as possible.
Around the world different cultures view the same animals as pets or a source of food and while eating Fluffy the cat, or Bruno the dog is distasteful to some, they are an essential food source for many people facing severe food security issues.
Education against cruelty to animals is a very much underfunded but much needed area, particularly within developing nations. The introduction and enforcement of laws preventing this cruelty is a world wide issue.
I would ask this. Is cruelty to animals worse when it is carried out as part of an ingrained cultural belief, taught from birth, where people do not perceive the action as cruel or illegal… Or when it occurs in a society where laws exist to prevent cruelty to animals but where industry regulations allow the inhumane treatment of battery hens, labratory animals, the trapping, poisoning and hunting of animals, pig pens and farrowing crates where pregnant pigs must lie on cold hard concrete floors…
Have a look at what we do to our own mass produced food sources and I think you’d also be turned off your food.
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Tari: I think the answer to your question is that both are equally ignorant and there’s no point arguing who is worse – IMO, they are equally as bad.
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I believe that we (Australia) are NOT ignorant, or at least, we have absolutely no excuse to be ignorant of how the meat on our table has been treated. We have a long history of animal welfare dating back (policy wise) to 1822 when the first act against cruelty to farm animals was passed in Britain and the flow on effect to Australia in the early 1870′s when the (now) RSPCA saw its first beginings.
Animal rights is still a fairly new concept in many developing countries and I struggle against the revolution and anger I feel towards those that cause harm to any animal, and expecting other cultures to do in a few decades, what we have taken (well) over 180 years to do. There’s no quick and easy answer to this issue and comments such as “I will never eat Asian food again” do nothing for a healthy debate.
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One response to the mistaken assumption that westerners have a stronger sense of animal rights than Asians is the following quote (taken from Gustaaf Houtaman‘s 1990 PhD thesis, p.29):
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(Thanks Stephen, you enlighten me. That must be the origin of our common belief in Burma. Following is taken from the novel “A Boy Soldier” p.9)
Our little town also had a sizeable population of Muslims and a large community of Christians. Most Muslims were the descendants of Indian immigrants from the subcontinent during the colonial times and the Christians were the local ethnic tribe of Kayins and some Chinese traders. The large and only mosque of the town was right across the wide street from our big house. The memories I had of the mosque and its people were the annual slaughtering of a large number of cattle inside the mosque. After the ritual slaughters they always gave away the raw, fresh, and still bloodied beef to the neighboring households including ours.
We Burmese didn’t eat beef for the religious reason and also because of the belief that we owed the cattle a lot, for they were the crucial part of growing and harvesting the rice crop. Only time we had a beef dish in our house was when my grandmother cooked a tasty chili beef curry out of the raw meat distributed free by the Muslims every year during the Ramadan festival celebrating the end of their month-long fast. Whenever I saw a distinctly bearded Muslim man or a head-to-toe burqa-covered Muslim woman out on the streets I always felt a mouth-watering taste of my grandma’s hot and spicy chili beef curry inside my mouth.
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This dog picture is awefil my seven year old was looking on line to look @ dogs or puppies and then she sees a picture from vietnam and dog eating?!!!!!! That’s so wrong that this is where a child c&n see!
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Your child needs to realize that not every culture has access to McDonald’s or Burger King.
These people eat dogs because they need some protein in their diet, not because they hate dogs.
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Senta // Aug 14, 2008 at 11:23 am
This dog picture is awefil my seven year old was looking on line to look @ dogs or puppies and then she sees a picture from vietnam and dog eating?!!!!!! That’s so wrong that this is where a child c&n see!
I agree take then dam picture down. We don’t use dogs as catle in our country!!!
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I am a dog lover. I absolutley adore animals and this made me HATE life. To see that someone would be so cruel and mean as to cut up and eat a dog is just horrible and if they did that in front of me here in the UNITED STATES i would go crazy and if it was up to me i would KILL the person who would hurt a dog and EAT it thats so wrong on many levels and discusting…I was looking up pictures for a report at school and saw these pictures they shouldn’t be posted on the internet AT ALL…
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Strange to see suburban Americans popping up on New Mandala on their road to discovering that the world is much bigger than their state.
No offense, but these types of people (American or not) make me laugh. Welcome to the interweb.
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A couple of days ago there was an article in the paper, describing how the price of rat meat in Viet Nam is skyrocketing due to a food shortage. It was accompanied with a photo of several skinned rats on a skewer.
I suppose that if you marinate them for a while, then bread them, they taste like chicken wings.
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I am a cow lover and I was very shocked that Australians eat too many cows everyday. It is just a joke.
Why do you stay in Australia with a different culture to claim about dog eating in Vietnam and other Asian countries? Do you think that people in India and some other countries are happy with eating beef in Australia? It is just the difference in cultures. In Australia, dogs are human’s friends. In other countries, dogs are just a kind of animal, like chickens, ducks or birds.
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It depends very much on belief and cultural perceptions. Let make a generalization: Pigs, cows, sheep, chickens, dogs, cats, kangaroos, etc – all are animals; all of them have feelings. So killing this animal is not much different from killing the other ones. And, the Asians kill dogs is not much far different from the dog-lovers kill/eat pigs/pork, etc.
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True, but we don’t believe that torturing them prior to eating them makes the meat better? Not to mention that many of the dogs are sick and dying already. UMMMM. That must be good for you? We don’t boil our chickens alive. This is truth, not propaganda.
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oh my goodness. this is horrible.
i myself am asian but i HATE how some asians eat cats and dogs
once on tv there was this dog caught in a trap somewhere in korea and there was a wire stuck around its neck it was HORRIBLE. some people found him and saved him..
JUST EAT COW INSTEAD GUYS.
without torture.
by the way, ive never seen asian food with dog/cat in it. so not all asian food is bad kay?
-yuri
wow
this is the most disgusting thing i have ever seen in my whole life. what if someone got you, and tortured you until you died, and then cooked you, and just ATE you??? seriously. they have feelings toooooooooo……..
gosh.i hate dog/cat eaters.
-jeewon
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It doesn’t offend me that people eat dogs and cats, any more than it offends me for them to eat cows, and pigs (which they eat in my country). I honor and feel respect for vegetarians.
The great issue of concern is the torturing of the animals. Debate is good, because it promotes thought, possibly leading to action. Just remember that the ultimate objective for this and any issue, is results. While speaking out against cruelty and torturing of animals, be sure to add exactly what the readers/listeners can do about it. (Try to add at least one non-financial option for those who can’t afford.) And make sure that your information on the subject is accurate, and any instructions, if followed, are or can be effective, at least in some degree. In other words, do your research from reliable sources. (I’m sorry I don’t, myself, know of any specific suggestions of what to do about this.)
Also, think of any given country/place as you would your own. Different people in that country believe different from each other. Be careful not to judge as a whole…
And if you, yourself, are intentionally contributing to, or allowing the torture or abuse of an animal for any reason, and you have any choice otherwise, please know that you can’t feel the pain they’re in. They can. Torture can be more intensely painful than you can imagine. And even mild abuse can breed fear, distrust and misery.
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We don’t really need to eat meat at all. Its much easier to capture and kill a vegetable than any animal. North America would be 99.9% vegetarian if we had to slaughter our own meat products! Its too bad people are such slaves to their taste buds. How about a little self control.
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A city in Belgium, (is it Ghent?), has recently mandated to go Vegetarian, the whole city, for one day a week.
In Manila, I recall an old friend telling me, that dogs had disappeared decades ago. Dogs and stray dogs particularly, it became apparent, were the favorite staple of the Filipino poor.
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If the picture was of the local canine filth in my area in central Bangkok, that howls all night, barks all day and shits whenever they like, I wouldn’t bother to piss on them even if they were being boiled.
Self-confessed dog (and cat) lovers are welcome to keep animals on their own premises. They can keep giraffes and hippos for all I care, but a serious offence is committed when their decision to embrace things with fur affects others, as so often happens.
The disgusting noise from neighbours’ animal trash (known in some circles as “pets”) that disturbs my sleep, prevents my use of the telephone and interrupts my work at home should be regarded as a form of assault, and punished accordingly. Fry them, boil them or bake them. I don’t care — just get their wretched day-and-night noise out of my bedroom, living room and home-office.
There is no place in the suburbs for things with brains the size of a plum that creep round on four legs, eating their own shit and rooting each other. The human morons that feed the strays are little better, as they look over their shoulder to make sure that a god is watching their “good deeds”.
If you want animals, go live on a farm, or visit a zoo. Do not expect my enthusiasm for your indulgence in “pets” to match yours, just because you think the never-ending barking of Sookums or the night-time wailing of Cutie-kittie might appeal to me as much as it does to you.
At least eating this urban refuse, as in the picture, makes them slightly useful, and countries that encourage the practice are taking a realistic approach to the scourge of so-called domestic animals in areas designed for humans only. If cats and dogs cannot be slaughtered in a way that makes them presentable to restaurants, just bash them with a cricket bat and leave the meat on the road, for other “pets” to come along and enjoy. It won’t take long for the blood and guts to be lapped up.
Spare taxpayers the price of the bullet that they really deserve.
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Yannawa, I read many comments here. Some were good, some were bad, others were so-so. There were ignorant comments and rather enlightening ones. There were comments full of common sense and some that lacked any trace of it. Yours, Yannawa, simply tells us of a sick, twisted mind. A dangerous person. I hope I’ll never have anything to do with you and people like you, Yannawa.
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Thanks Alex, for your thoughtful and considered response. To paraphrase you, some comments here are full of common sense and some lack any trace of it. Given that you failed to address any of the issues raised by me or others, and rather chose to offer an unqualified medical diagnosis of me, I would suggest your comment falls into the latter category.
Perhaps I do have a “sick, twisted mind”. It wasn’t always that way. There was a time when I actually kept “pets”, but ten years of living near a pack of hounds that howls in unision for twenty minutes when a butterfly passes, a mongrel toy terrier that yaps at the wheels of anything moving, then pisses on those wheels when they stop, an Alaskan husky, kept in a cage in the heat of Bangkok while whining constantly for the more familiar tundra, and a dozen stray cats that scream day and night during mating rituals anywhere and everywhere, has changed my attitude.
Yes, a I could be a “dangerous person”. I might be a bus driver who didn’t get proper sleep last night because of animal noise, and in irritation, anger or plain stupidity, I just overtook a truck on the crest of a hill. All my passengers were killed, as was the truck driver. I might be a doctor rostered night shift, but couldn’t rest today because of neighbours’ selfish indulgence of “pets”. Sorry, the scalpel slipped. I might be a banker talking on the phone from home, and just lost concentration because Tiddles next door let out a hail of barking as the postman arrived. I made a bad choice, millions of dollars evaporated and many lost their homes. Sure, I’m dangerous indeed, but what made me that way? Noise is not just a nuisance, it is a serious public-health issue. Crap on footpaths and the many viruses that mammals carry are also public-health issues, but noise is the silent killer.
Rest assured Alex, you will probably never have to have anything to do with me and people like me. It is unlikely we will meet at, for example, a “pet” show, which would probably be sponsored by the multi-billion-dollar pet-food industry, or can you believe it, $75-per-night pet hotels while humans are homeless.
I gather you are like a few of those above who claim to be an “animal lover”. Well that always looks good on your CV, especally when trying to score points to get into an afterlife. I’m a lover of New Zealand cheese and French wine, and those fancies have no impact whatsoever on my neighbours, unlike the indulgences of locals who seek the fast track to heaven by encouraging four-legged filth on or about their premises. I’ve actually heard people refer to the lump of useless meat and fluff on their floor as “part of the family”. I wonder if their other relatives eat their own vomit, root at random in public, drop hair in the video collection, howl all night and defecate where they want.
Oh, and spare me the “man’s best friend” line. I’ve heard that a few times already. Useful on farms, as guides for the blind and in some areas of law-enforcement, otherwise the best place for domestic animals in urban areas is on a menu.
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are you dum you murder i hate you how could you do this you should go to jail thats animal abuse what if that was you you would not like it would you that is the worst thing i ever saw in my whole intire life
you must be really stupid cause that might be the stupids thing you could ever do your going down with the devel
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Hey, Yannawa, I wonder how things would be if you and I switched lives. You’d get some peace and quiet, and I’d get a taste of what you’re going through.
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Only some ppl do something like that, i’m asian and mostly asian hate those murderers , they try to hunt something different and they think it’s cool but that is the freakin’ stupid I ever know, i want they die all :/
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Yannawa you speak beautifully.
One poster actually said she’s never going to eat Asian food because of this picture. What a retard.
And all this talk of feelings, what about cows and pigs or even fish, don’t they have feelings.
Its like people who eat tuna but are sickened if a dolphin cops it. Its fine to eat a species to the edge of extinction but if makes a few cute noises and likes to have its head stroked then it has to be protected more than humans.
Get a life people, its a dog, if you were brought up in that country you’d eat it and if you were starving you would eat it. Imbeciles.
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@ Tari,
I worked almost 7 years in farming in Denmark through the nineties and early zeros, primarily in pig production and would like to correct some misperceptions.
Concrete floor is not an issue and not cold because the animals warm it up. There are other stress factors, over-density and lack of stimulation (toy) being the worst, but no production pigs, as far as I am aware, are being tortured.
Also, already in my time there were plenty of focus on animal welfare issues and most farmers opted to convert to welfare-enhancing systems with straw lining when their old systems wore down .
E.g. in the old days pregnant sows were kept in a sort of narrow cages with concrete floor without opportunity to play and exercise. Those systems became illegal while I was working in farming, 10-15 years ago. Most farmers converted to deep litter systems where the pregnant sows are kept in groups and fed via feeding stations triggered by electronic transponders on the sows (pregnant sows need individual feeding). The new systems had their own animal welfare problems (weak sows exposed to bullies), however it is clearly much better than before.
What I want to say is that there is continuous improvements towards better animal welfare in farming in the West and certainly, no one are out to torture animals. I am only familiar with farming in Denmark and somewhat Australia. These are both countries which good standards in animal welfare in agriculture, however I am pretty sure that is the style in at least all of Scandinavia and South Europe as well.
I don’t know with U.S. farming … Europe doesn’t permit import of much US meat due to animal welfare & health concerns. E.g. in the US cattle are injected with growth hormones to force them to grow faster. Maybe not all, but it is permitted and common. That’s bad, and hormones in animal production is not allowed in Europe or Australia, neither is import of animals that have been treated with hormones.
So, while I strongly condemn the horrific torture of dogs or cats for food production and am disgusted by the idea of the slaughter of dogs (especially in such barbaric manner), I think some of the Americans jumping up and down may want to look into their own backyard as well.
Ps. When it comes to battery hens I completely agree. Battery hen production should not be allowed.
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“neither is import of animals that have been treated with hormones”… I meant import of meat of animals treated with growth hormones.
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traveling in 3rd world country for a work on NGO makes you sad most of the times, we cant judge them according to what we just see and know on the web. people eat dogs, cats and other exotic animals because its a part of their culture, i been in Philippines for 6 months, in the metro cities, if you kill a dog for food you will be prison, but in remote areas, people still eat dogs and no one go to jail , coz even the authorities eat dogs on remote areas. funny but its true, but still good coz little by little people are being educated not to eat dogs in the Philippines and its good that the government punish those people who loves to eat dogs.
its really hard to bend a culture how much more for a hungry stomach
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Do you know that pet dogs are stolen from Thailand, sick, dehydrated, and tortured, some carrying rabies, and a host of other parasites so I hope you enjoyed your “delicacy.” This barbaric trade is under investigation and needs to be ended. There are dogs packed into Thailand’s shelters dying of distemper and suffering and people scrambling to save them so be a little more educated before you make flippant comments about Fluffy on your plate.
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