Fw: Korea cover feature from Dec. 2001 ANIMAL PEOPLE: Koreans seek to legalize dog meat

[Guest guest]

-

" Kim Bartlett, Publisher, ANIMAL PEOPLE " <anpeople

<anpeople

Tuesday, 08 January, 2002 10:15

Korea cover feature from Dec. 2001 ANIMAL PEOPLE: Koreans seek to

legalize dog meat

 

 

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2001:

 

 

Koreans seek to legalize dog meat

 

SEOUL, BEIJING--Twenty members of the South Korean National

Assembly from the opposition Grand National Party on December 28,

2001 introduced a bill to legalize butchering and selling dogs for

meat.

The bill was authored by Kim Hong-shin, who unsuccessfully

introduced a similar measure in 1999.

National Assembly member Song Seok-chan of the ruling

Millenium Democratic Party said he would also draft a bill to

legalize dog meat, with bipartisan support.

Either version would amend a weak 1991 law that allowed only

species listed under the Livestock Processing Act to be sold as food.

As dogs were not listed, this drove the trade in dog meat and other

unlisted species to back streets on city fringes, but no one has

ever been prosecuted for breaking the law.

Both Kim Hong-shin and Song Seok-chan argue that legalization

would permit inspection which would prevent cruelty and filth such as

ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett photographed at the Moran Market

near Seoul in May 2001. The Kim Hong-shin and Song Seok-chan

positions have been echoed in recent statements by representatives of

the World Society for the Protection of Animals and Royal SPCA of

Britain.

The fallacy inherent in that view, however, is that while

dogs and cats are not listed under the Livestock Processing Act,

chickens, ducks, and rabbits are, and are all prominently sold

alongside the dogs and cats at the Moran Market, documentedly

subjected to precisely the same cruelty and filth.

Although the Korean practice of boiling cats alive to make a

tonic used by elderly women is also a topic of global protest, it is

not addressed by the proposed legislation.

Legalizing dog meat would require the approval of the

majority of the 273-member South Korean National Assembly.

" By legalizing dog-eating, " Song told the South African

Press Agency, " we expect to prevent foreign criticism that pops up

every time we host an international event. "

Song Seok-chan and other Korean dog meat defenders ignore the

20-year effort against the dog meat trade led by Korean Animal

Protection Society founder Sunnan Kum, of Daegu, and her sister

Kyenan Kum, founder of International Aid for Korean Animals. The

global animal protection community has rallied to their support

twice, in association with the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul and the

2002 World Cup of Soccer, to be divided between sites in South Korea

and Japan, from May 31 to June 30. The Kum sisters have never let

up, however, and have done the key strategic planning.

IAKA, based in Oakland, Calif-ornia, recently opened a

second office in London, headed by Sunnan Kum's daughter Sueyoun

Cho, 24.

The renewed South Korean effort to legalize dog-eating

erupted after French activist Brigitte Bardot, 67, campaigned

against it through interviews with South Korean news media, talk

shows, e-mails, and her web site.

Remembered as a film star, Bardot has now worked for animal

protection for more than twice as long as she was in the film

industry. Her organization, the Fondation Brigitte Bardot, is

among the largest doing internation al animal welfare campaigns.

Dog-eaters reportedly filled South Korean web sites with more than

1,000 anti-Bardot messages and " pornographic references, " as the

Agence France Press put it.

Korean dog-eating was also defended by Li Bin, the Chinese

ambassador to Seoul, who anticipated similar criticism of Chinese

dog-eating during the publicity build-up toward the 2008 Summer

Olympics in Beijing.

Bardot was supported by the French national soccer team, the

current holders of the World Cup, and International Federation of

Football Associations president Sepp Blatter, who urged South Korea

to observe a moratorium on dog-eating during the World Cup--which

will coincide with the peak season for dog-eating in Korea.

Korea World Cup Organizing Committee president Chung Mong

Joon reportedly tried to mollify Bardot by sending her a popular

South Korean video about five young women who protect a stray kitten.

But Bardot and most of the rest of the international animal

protection community are well aware that only three million of the 47

million South Koreans eat dogs. The practices of the three million

who do are the issue.

" I would prefer to receive the support of the Korean people,

who alone can abolish this barbaric practice which sickens the

world, " Bardot said.

 

Vivisectors

 

On December 20, 166 prominent Koreans including many medical

researchers published a statement declaring that " The issue of dog

meat is a matter of national pride. "

Sungkonghoe University professor of environmental studies and

Voice4Animals founder Park Chang-kil smelled a genetically modified

rat.

In the November edition of the U.S. journal Archives of

Biochemistry and Biophysics, the Korea Food and Drug Administration

had claimed to have developed the first laboratory mouse to carry

human genes suitable for testing anti-cancer drugs. Expressing

ambitions of cornering the world market for cancer-related animal

testing, the state-funded Korea Technology Investment Corporation

committed $16.7 million to assist biotechnology firms with start-up

capital.

South Korean president Kim Dae-jung had already identified

biotech as a key sector for national economic development.

These developments all occurred, Korea Herald staff writer

Cahill explained on December 19, as the National Assembly

Health and Welfare Committee was " reviewing regulations for animal

research protocol, " and the Ministry of Science and Technology was

" working to develop bioethics legislation that would affect animals

used in genetic engineering experiments. "

Superficially, the draft legislation is based on the U.S.

Animal Welfare Act, but Park Chang-kil warned ANIMAL PEOPLE in May

2001 that it is much weaker, and would actually serve to shield the

Korean biotech industry from humane scrutiny.

" Park said Korean laboratories are becoming more secretive, "

wrote Cahill, " as seen in the removal of pictures from several

industry Web sites after the biotech ethics issue gained public

attention earlier in 2001. "

Whipping up legislative opposition to animal rights activism

was very much in the interest of the biotech sector, Park pointed

out, whether or not the researchers cared at all about dog-eating.

 

Cultural issues

 

Current anti-dog meat efforts focus on Korea, because the

Kum sisters have managed to capture world attention, with the help

of 26 ANIMAL PEOPLE feature articles in 30 months, rolling video

displays presented by SHARK, and grant support from the

International Fund for Animal Welfare, but dog-eating is of ongoing

concern to animal defenders throughout Asia--and has been for a lot

longer than most U.S. and European animal advocates have been aware

of it.

Dog-eating was among the first issues addressed by the

Philippine Animal Welfare Society, for instance, founded in 1962 by

the late Muriel Jay and current president Nita Hontiveros-Lichauco.

Dog-eating also disturbed Philippine-born pro-animal author Betty Lim

King as a child in the 1950s, when she struggled at considerabled

psychological cost, she has written, to make herself see the

difference she was told existed between purebred pets and " edible "

dogs.

ANIMAL PEOPLE publisher Kim Bartlett recalls being upset as a

child by descriptions of dog slaughter she heard from her mother,

who toured the Philippines with the USO just after World War II.

Dog-eating customs vary somewhat, as dogs are eaten mainly

during hot weather in Korea, but in cold weather in Vietnam. Large

dogs are favored for eating in China; puppies are preferred in

Vietnam.

There are also commonalities, however, in that virtually

all regular dog-eaters are men--but not all men eat dogs. In Korea,

one survey has reported that 92% of men and 68% of women over age 20

have tasted dog meat, but female consumption appears to be mainly

incidental, in connection with cooking for men. Only one Korean man

in eight currently consumes dog meat. As dog meat is relatively

expensive, fewer men eat dogs in poorer Asian nations. Conversely,

dog-eating is now rare in Japan, Hong Kong and Singapore, the most

affluent parts of Asia, where the average level of education is

higher than in Korea.

Traditionally, dog meat is believed to have aphrodisiacal

qualities, and is served at restaurants in bar-and-brothel

neighborhoods. Women in the dog meat trade have approximately the

same social status as prostitutes, and reputedly often are old

prostitutes.

Also traditionally, except in Vietnam where puppies are

killed with a blow, most dog-eaters prefer that the dogs be killed

slowly, in terror, supposedly to suffuse their flesh with

adrenalin. Since the dogs' adrenalin would rapidly break down when

the flesh is cooked, the reported effect seems to be produced mainly

by the belief of the dog-eater that the dog has suffered. Some

accounts have held that torturing dogs to death is primarily a Korean

custom, but ANIMAL PEOPLE has now gathered enough first-hand

accounts from elsewhere to establish that it is not.

In Korea, however, the old-style death by slow hanging,

flogging, and dehairing with an open flame has mostly been replaced

since 1991 with electrocution.

Most Asian dog-eaters, except for some Philippine tribal

peoples, are of Han Chinese ethnic background, as the custom of

dog-eating seems to have spread from China to as far away as Tahiti

by trade routes, taking hold mainly in port cities. While some

Buddhists eat dogs and even sell dog meat, dog-eating is most common

among Confucians and Christians, and is virtually unknown among

Asian Moslems and Hindus.

 

Thai trafficker let go

 

Dog-eating came to Thailand less than a generation ago, when

Vietnamese of ethnic Chinese origin were driven out of Vietnam during

the border conflict with China that followed the U.S. withdrawal from

Vietnam. Dog-eating is still offensive to the Thai Buddhist

majority, according to Thai Animal Guardians Association

secretary-general Roger Lohanon, who has repeatedly asked the Thai

government to close the dog slaughterhouses started by the former

refugees in the northeastern part of the country.

Since 1985, Lohanon recently told the Bangkok Post, the

slaughterhouses have exported dog leather products such as drums,

gloves, handbags, and watch straps. In addition, Lohanon said,

" Dog meat is distributed among local drinkers and also mixed with

beef supplied to food markets nationwide. "

On December 19, Thai police arrested one Manop Ronthee, 28,

as he trucked 500 pounds of dog meat to market. Ronthee reportedly

admitted having worked for a year as a dog meat hauler, and named

several Chinese restaurants in Yaowarat as regular buyers of dog

penises. But a day later Ronthee was released. Police major-general

Jongrak Juthanon said Ronthee had not committed a crime because there

was no evidence that he had sold dog meat under false pretenses.

Dog-eating is a custom of older men in most places, but not

always. A recent visitor to Yibin, China, the highest port city on

the Yangtze River, told ANIMAL PEOPLE that the city and suburbs have

a human population of about seven million people. Among them, they

support five dog meat restaurants, which sell up to 30 dogs per

month each: about 1,800 dogs per year. Older people there do not

eat dogs, but young men are apparently taking it up, influenced by

commerce and immigration from Guangdong, Hubei, Liaoning,

Heilongjiang, and Jilin.

" Xichang, south of Yibin, has a stronger dog meat

industry, " we were told. " Dog meat is very expensive compared to

pork, which is as cheap as ordinary vegetables. "

 

Pets in China

 

Officially, there are only 150,000 dogs of any kind in

China, including those raised for meat.

The number of pet dogs reportedly continues to grow, mostly

illegally because of license fees often set at 25% or more of the

typical worker's annual income. But the pet dog population is also

often reduced by official purges, including an estimated 1,000

unlicensed pets who were killed in Shenzhen in late November after

two people died from rabies. The Beijing Morning Post was reportedly

critical of the massacre, though Beijing has also had recent dog

purges.

About 10,000 Chinese citizens received post-bite rabies

vaccination in 2001, the Beijing Morning Post said. The implied

ratio of bites to dogs is about the same as in the U.S., but as most

dogs in the U.S. have received preventive vaccination, relatively

few Americans require post-bite treatment.

ANIMAL PEOPLE also recently received a first-hand report

about the dog market in Zigong, China. The correspondent said that,

" Meat dogs sell for about $12.50 to $30.00. Guard dogs, considered

inedible, go for much more. One dog there was bought from Germany

for $750, and had won many competitions. Import from Hong Kong is

more common. The dogs come pre-trained, " although China has also

established guard dog training centers in Beihing, Chengdu.

Nanning, Shenyang, and Xian.

Pet dogs, chiefly purebreds but not always, sell for

intermediate prices, the correspondent said. Cats go for 25¢ to

$1.00.

Reports about St. Bernards being sold to China as breeding

stock for the dog meat trade have helped inflame global opinion

against dog-eating to the extent that Elly Maynard of Taronga, New

Zealand, was in November 2001 able to present an anti-dog meat

petition with four million signatures to a United Nations Food and

Agricult-ure Organization meeting in Rome. The petition asked the

U.N. to classify dogs as non-livestock.

In Switzerland, home of the St. Bernard, Skye terrier

fanciers Andreas and Verena von Albertini formed a political party to

seek rights for dogs, and identified ending the export of St.

Bernards to dog-eating nations as a top priority.

The Australian National Kennel Club meanwhile passed a

resolution against any member knowingly selling a pedigreed dog to

" any person residing in an overseas country known to be involved in

the use of dogs for meat, without first satisfying the affiliate

body that the purchaser is of good character and is a member of the

appropriate Canine Kennel Council or Canine Associ-ation in the

country of import. "

Unfortunately, that resolution played into the common

misperception of dog meat defenders that non-Asian critics just do

not understand that the dogs who are eaten are of different breeds

from pets--a pretense belied by Kim Bartlett's Moran Market photos,

which show an Irish setter, a Jack Russell terrier, and many German

shepherd, Labrador, and golden retriever mixes among the dogs

awaiting butchery.

The major outside source of dogs sold for consumption in

China seems to be Vietnam, according to Jill Robinson of the Animals

Asia Foundation.

" Reports describe dogs with their feet tied, bound in pairs

by the legs, " Robinson told ANIMAL PEOPLE. " Their mouths are sewn

shut with cords through their upper and lower jaws. Hung upside down

from bamboo poles, the dogs are carried across the border. "

 

Turtle rescue

 

Dogs are the species whose treatment at Asian live markets

has attracted the most critical notice both from within Asia and from

abroad, but significant concern exists for other species caught up

in the live market traffic, exemplified by the international

response to the December 11 seizure of nearly 7,500 rare turtles from

smugglers in Hong Kong. Reportedly worth $3.2 million on the black

market, the turtles received temporary care at the Kadoorie Farm &

Botanic Garden in the Hong Kong New Territories.

About 750 turtles soon died from the effects of dehydration

and cold during transit. United Airlines then donated $30,000 worth

of cargo space to fly approximately 3,500 survivors, weighing six

tons, to Florida. There the 130-member Turtle Survival Alliance

took charge of them, while trying to find help and homes for the

rest in Europe.

TSA was formed in 2000 to address just such a crisis by Fort

Worth Zoo conservation biologist Rick Hudson and husband-and-wife

research team Kurt Buhlmann and Tracey Tuberville of the Savannah

River Ecology Laboratory. Seventy TSA volunteers helped to relay the

turtles in batches of about 200 to the Alapattah Flats Turtle

Preserve, near Miami, where they would receive further care before

being distributed among accredited U.S. zoos and educational

institutions.

Hudson also thanked IFAW, WSPA, the Humane Society of the

U.S., Walt Disney Inc., the Memphis Zoo, Tortoise Rescue, the

Wildlife Conservation Society, Conservation International, and the

Turtle Hospital of New England for emergency aid.

 

More big busts

 

The Hong Kong turtle seizure was only one of a string of big

wildlife trafficking busts. On November 27, police seized 1,988

turtles of various contraband species at the Bangkok International

Airport, en route from Malaysia to China. Four days later, Bangkok

police intercepted a truck hauling 483 armadillos, believed to have

come from Malaysia, apparently also to be flown to China.

Raiding shops and restaurants around Sibu, Malaysian

forestry officials in the same week seized 200 pounds of poached

flying foxes, turtles, frogs, monitor lizard meat, boar meat,

and venison.

Forest rangers in central Vietnam announced that they had

seized more than six tons of snakes, turtles, and geckos during

approximately the same time frame, but their effort was more a

shakedown than a rescue, as the rangers collected $6,600 for the

return of each of four trucks to the alleged traffickers, and then

sold the confiscated animals themselves for $19,800.

Cambodian officials by contrast claimed to have saved the

lives of more than 1,300 animals, also seizing and burning nearly

700 pounds of poached meat, in raids on 137 restaurants. Depending

on their chances of survival if returned to the wild, the Cambodian

animals were either released into a national park or taken to a zoo,

military police officer Eng Peotith said.

 

Teachings

 

Growing attention to protecting vanishing species may not

imply rising ethical concern for all animals, but Taiwanese vice

president Annette Lu on November 4, 2001 invoked Buddhist teachings

about compassion toward all beings as the proper basis for

conservation at an " ecology fair " held in Chiku, Taiwan, to promote

protection of an endangered shore bird called the blackfaced

spoonbill.

" As all living beings are equal, " Lu reportedly said,

" humans have no right to threaten the survival of another species. "

The San Francisco-based Chinese newspaper World Journal

extended similar thoughts to dogs in an August 3, 2001 editorial.

" Is a man's life more valuable that the life of a dog? " the World

Journal asked --and then suggested that this is not the most relevant

issue in discussing how dogs are treated. After reviewing pragmatic

reasons for protecting endangered species, working dogs, and pets,

the World Journal added, " Dogs who are not considered pets or

endangered need to be treated well for humanitarian reasons. Even

animals who are to be slaughtered as food should be cared for

properly before they are killed, so that they do not suffer

unnecessarily.

" Loving and caring for animals are signs of a civilized

society, " the editorial continued. " By practicing kindness to

animals, people become more ethical and more humanitarian. The next

time a Chinese person is confronted with the question [of how dogs

are treated], the response should not be, 'What's the big deal if

we kill a few dogs?' We must think about changing the way we look at

animal rights. If we do not value these animals, our own lives in

the end might not be as important as the life of a dog. "

While philosophically rationalizing compassion for animals

was important to Lu and the World Journal editors, the Beijing group

Friends of Nature seemed to feel no need in an August 29 e-mail to

ANIMAL PEOPLE denouncing the notorious Worldwide Web hoax " Bonsai

kittens. " Neither did Friends of Nature seem to think the Asian

ethnicity of the perpetrator in any way excused the cruelty that the

" Bonsai kittens " web site purports to depict and advocate. The only

evident concern of Friends of Nature was that raising kittens like

bonsai trees would be cruel, and should therefore be stopped.

Real cruelty to real kittens is easily seen in China. A

recent e-mail to ANIMAL PEOPLE from a business visitor described " an

old man carrying on a bamboo pole over his shoulders two chicken wire

boxes, each containing nearly 50 four-week-old kittens. "

Humane Society of Canada executive director Michael

O'Sullivan told Canadian Press that he counted 47 kittens crammed

into such a cage at a meat market in Hanoi, Vietnam, in July 2001,

even though domestic cats have officially been protected throughout

Vietnam since 1998, for their rodent-killing value. Claire Arthurs

of BBC on December 31, 2001 affirmed from Hanoi that eating cats is

still prohibited in Vietnam--but acknowledged that illegal cat meat

restaurants also still exist.

 

Relative progress

 

The ubiquitousness of such abuses can be misinterpreted,

however, especially if one never saw U.S. humane society staff

packing abandoned kittens into a decompression chamber to be killed,

or into a cage to be killed with truck exhaust. The people who did

this were often as blinded by their perception that this was

necessary " euthanasia " as Korean consumers of boiled-to-death cats

and kittens seem blinded by their perception that drinking cat tonic

is the best way to relieve arthritis.

Some humane society personnel in some places still seem hazy

about what constitutes cruelty and how to set a good example. The

Cook Island News of August 11, 2001, for instance, described the

efforts of Cook Islands SPCA president Nick Smythe to obtain $50,000

in government funding with which to exterminate the estimated 2,000

free-roaming dogs on the islands and dispose of their remains.

" I would have no problem with people eating the strays, "

Smythe said, " but the kind of people who eat dogs here tend to pinch

other people's pets rather than go to the effort of hunting dogs who

are harder to catch. "

Thirty years ago in the U.S., decompressing animals or

gassing them with truck exhaust were common humane society practices,

albeit out of view of the public. Twenty years ago only the most

backward animal control departments still used these methods,

although selling dogs and cats to laboratories was still frequent.

Now most states have outlawed decompression killing and

gassing with unfiltered hot exhaust. Thirteen states had banned

selling shelter animals to laboratories by 1985, and the number of

shelters in any state that still do is believed to be less than 1%.

Yet U.S. factory farms and slaughterhouses still inflict

comparable cruelties on more than nine billion chickens per year,

and nearly a billion other animals raised and killed for food, and

most Americans do not yet find that outrageous.

Poultry and other livestock are not treated more kindly in

Asia, yet they are not deliberately treated worse than dogs and

cats, who are killed more cruelly than other animals who are eaten.

In 1999 IFAW and the Animals Asia Foundation commissioned

some of the most extensive public opinion research ever done on

animal welfare issues to find out where to start in advancing humane

concerns in China.

They discovered, as ANIMAL PEOPLE detailed in March 2000,

that the attitudes of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong residents

toward animals are almost the same as American attitudes were when

similar survey questions were asked in the late 1970s and early

1980s.

The major differences in what the U.S. and China condone by

way of public behavior seem to reflect contrasting history:

Americans who find something offensive can organize to ban it.

In China, Korea, Vietnam, and most of the rest of Asia,

harshly patriarchal and authoritarian governments have often severely

punished dissent for thousands of years. Men, who most often commit

cruelty, have ruled families; women, most inclined to oppose

cruelty, have had little or no right of expression even within their

homes.

--M.C.

--

Kim Bartlett, Publisher of ANIMAL PEOPLE Newspaper

Website: <www.animalpeoplenews.org>

Mailing address: P.O. Box 960, Clinton WA 98236 U.S.A.