LITMIR.BIZ

      Held in the soil-encrusted fingers of a south Indian rat-catcher, a newly born mole-rat, found in a nest under a rice field, will be a part of the evening meal for the family. Rats threaten the country’s rice crop, and the catchers are noncaste tribal peoples who eke out a living by selling the animals, which are also an essential part of their diet.

      dogs Et cats

      In most Euro-American countries (except in some immigrant communities, of course), dog is man’s best friend, or so they say. That explains why so many North Americans and Europeans get so upset when this animal is eaten so matter-of-factly in many Asian and Latin American countries, and why one-time movie sex goddess in France, Brigitte Bardot, is campaigning so vigorously to get the government of South Korea to ban the eating of dog—a cherished staple in that country—in advance of soccer’s 2002 World Cup tourney.

      Ms. Bardot speaks for an animal-rights foundation bearing her name that is telling soccer fans not to attend the games if eating dogs is not outlawed and all the restaurants in Seoul offering dog on the menu aren’t closed. While hers is a valid point of view shared by many Euro-Americans, in other parts of the world-especially in numerous Asian countries—it is incomprehensible. Dog is an affordable protein source not only Korea, but in most of southern China (including Hong Kong) and much of Southeast Asia, as well as in parts of Latin America.

      How Much Is That Doggie in the Paddy?

      “The Lao [residents of Laos and northeastern Thailand] say eel is the best water meat and that dog is the best land meat,” Chavalit Phorak, a man in the dog-slaughtering business in Thailand told The Nation, a Bangkok newspaper, in 1997. “It’s much tastier than beef and not as tough. In the past, families used to kill a dog to eat each week. People liked the meat, but they had to be careful not to exhaust their supply. After all, there’s not much meat on a big dog, let alone a pup, and a dog takes time to grow, so farming them is still impractical.”

      In most countries where dog is eaten, farming is not necessary, as strays and other unwanted canines are plentiful. For this reason, there are men like Chavalit, who travels the back roads and barters for village dogs, then sells the meat, entrails, and skins. “My truck has a loudspeaker,” he said. “Everywhere I go I tell people that I will give them pails for their naughty or lazy dogs.”

      A healthy dog, in 1997, was worth two buckets. It took Chavalit three or four days to collect a hundred dogs, the number at which he broke even and possibly earned a small profit, as each trip cost as much as US$400 for petrol and pails. He then returned to the slaughterhouse, where butchers were paid twelve cents for every dog they killed, with a blow to the head with a hammer so as not to damage the skin.

      Another twelve cents was paid for skinning the dogs, plus sixteen cents for butchering the meat. The meat was then sold for up to $2 a kilo, with each dog contributing about three kilos, and the skins were sold for between $1 and $2 to factories in Thailand, Taiwan, and Japan, where they were turned into golf gloves. (Think about that next time you step up to the tee.) The genitals were also sold, for about forty cents, and used in soup and wine, mainly in China, Korea, Vietnam, and Japan.

      There are precedents for Ms. Bardot’s proposed ban, however. In 1988, the South Korean government ruled that restaurants serving dog soup, or poshintang, be closed to present a better image for foreigners attending the Olympic Games. Ten years later, in 1998, Philippine President Fidel Ramos signed into law a statute banning the killing of dogs for food, although its extreme popularity in the north made success of enforcement questionable.

      Similar action has been taken elsewhere. In 1989, two Cambodian refugees living in Southern California were charged with animal cruelty for eating a German Shepherd puppy. The charges eventually were dropped when a judge ruled that the dog was killed by the acceptable practices of slaughtering agricultural livestock. That did not satisfy activists who later the same year convinced the California legislature into passing a law making it a misdemeanor to eat a dog or a cat, punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of $1,000. Later still, the law was amended to include any animal traditionally kept as a pet or companion. Presumably, those charged with enforcing this law were expected to look the other way when 4-H Club members led their prize cattle and pigs to slaughter, animals they had raised from birth and for whom they frequently developed great affection. Furthermore, rabbits could still be killed and eaten and so could tropical fish, because they were legally categorized as livestock and fish, not pets.

      There is no mystery why so many Euro-Americans oppose the eating of dog. There have been too many dog heroes in literature, TV and film—in stories by Jack London and dozens more, in movies like Rin Tin Tin, Lassie, Benji, and Disney’s enduring 101 Dalmatians, in virtually everything writ large in popular culture, from the heroic K-9 Corps in the U.S. military to the Saint Bernard who carries a flask of life-saving grog to humans lost in the Alps. In addition, the dog-believed to be a domestication of a Neolithic Asiatic wolf-through the years has proven useful to man because of its speed, hearing, sense of smell, hunting instinct, herding abilities, and companionship. So even for those who enjoy snails and octopus and may even be so brave as to try rattlesnake chili and shark’s fin soup, the line is drawn when it comes to man’s canine friend.

      All that said, dog has been a welcome dish across much of the world’s history and geography. The recorded eating of dog goes back to Confucius’s time in China, circa 500 B.C., when the Li chi, a handbook of ancient ritual translated in 1885, offered recipes for delicacies prepared on ceremonial occasions. One of the dishes was canine, fried rice with crispy chunks cut from a wolfs breast, served with dog liver basted in its own fat, roasted and seared over charcoal. During the same period, an emperor who wanted more warriors encouraged childbirth by awarding what was described in the literature of the time as a succulent puppy to any woman bearing a boy.

      The Chinese (and other Asians) regarded dog meat as more than a culinary treat. It was considered to be very good for the yang, the male, hot, extroverted part of human nature, as opposed to the female, cool, introverted yin. It was believed to “warm” the blood and thus was consumed in greatest frequency during the winter months. As early as the fourth century B.C., a Chinese philosopher named Mencius praised dog meat for its pharmaceutical properties, recommending it for liver ailments, malaria, and jaundice. Along with many other foods, it also was believed to enhance virility. The Chinese also served a sort of dog wine, believed to be a remedy for weariness.

      Later, the Manchu Dynasty that ruled China from the seventeenth century A.D. banned dog meat, declaring its consumption barbarian. However, southern Chinese continued to eat it and Sun Yat-sen’s opposition Kuomintang followers began their meetings by cooking dog, believing the act symbolized their anti-Manchu revolution. The code name was “Three-Six Meat,” a play on the Chinese word for the number nine, which rhymed with the word for dog. Even today in Hong Kong, where since 1950 it has been illegal to catch or kill dogs or to possess their meat, butchers and customers use the expression “Three-Six Meat” when

Скачать книгу