Posted on 04/22/2003 12:17:20 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
The breakout of SARS in China's southern Guangdong (also called Canton) Province is thought-provoking. This is the fastest-growing province renowned for the Cantonese cuisine, one of the four major culinary subcultures in China. Cantonese dishes boast exquisite presentation, palatable taste, and outrageous, and often distorted, "creativity." It is this last trait that is troubling people in other parts of China and the outside world.
In being creative, some local chefs go out of their way to prepare the most exotic and shocking banquet with "delicacies from the mountains and the sea." It is not a secret that the Cantonese eat everything. A quite sarcastic saying in China goes like this: The Cantonese eat anything that has wings except the airplanes, and anything that has legs except the table.
According to the Animals Asia Foundation, a Hong Kong-based organization devoted to helping animals in distress throughout Asia, truckloads of live animals (wild and exotic, as well as companion, such as dogs and cats) are daily shipped from all directions to Canton. Local restaurants compete with one another, bragging of their capability of satisfying the most bizarre tastes.
Like its manufactured products, the Cantonese culinary subculture is spreading to other provinces. In southern Kiangsi Province bordering Canton, local Communist Party officials reportedly love a special dish prepared with endangered owls. A more grotesque appetite is growing among middle-aged men in nearby Fujian Province. Instead of using Viagra, they flock to restaurants that serve cat meat. The word going around is that cat meat can cure male impotency and boost sex drives.
The imaginative side of the Cantonese cuisine is like a prairie fire. Politically, restaurants in Canton that serve exotic animal food products are violating Chinese laws. Wild and companion animals, shipped from other provinces and from Vietnam, are often sick when they arrive in Canton after long journeys under the hot sun. Many of the cats had been strays feeding on animal corpses before they were caught. These creatures are not food but huge health hazards.
Suspecting that the SARS virus was from non-farm animals, the Chinese government two weeks ago raided restaurants in south China and confiscated more than 70,000 wild animals, many of whom were state-protected endangered species. Environmentally and psychologically, the hundreds of restaurants in Canton that serve exotic food are a ghostly scene. The back yards of many of them are butcher sites with blood streams flowing aimlessly into and contaminating nearby rivers, ponds and even wells.
The "creativity" of the Cantonese cuisine is ruining China's wildlife and that of China's neighbors such as Vietnam. Bear paws are still sought after by local restaurants. Cruel and crippling traps are therefore used to catch bears and other animals, posing a huge threat to both animals in the wild and humans. Giant salamanders are still in danger of extinction. The owl population in South China is having a hard time recovering. Pangolins are disappearing from the wet hillsides and foggy valleys in south, southwest and western Chinese provinces.
Is there a connection between the use of wild animals, dogs and cats by Canton's restaurants and the concentration of SARS in that province? Preliminary results from research in Hong Kong says so. However, a more solid a connection has yet to be established or disproved. Regardless of what future studies may show, the health hazard from consuming food products made of sick animals should be clear to all.
It is time that Cantonese rethink their food subculture. And, it is time we show respect to other lives who are sharing the Earth with us. As the most developed province in mainland China, Canton should also lead the country in political, environmental and health consciousness. Governments at all levels have an unshakable responsibility to crack down on restaurants that violate state laws.
Li is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Houston-Downtown. Chinese and East Asian politics are his areas of study.
Anyone have any idea what "preliminary results" he is talking about?
"Because the bird flu virus was detected in the lungs and there is no other possible clinical explanation, there are strong indications that the man died as a result of the bird flu virus," the Health Ministry said in a statement. The World Health Organization has warned that the disease could turn into a human epidemic, just as some scientists believe an animal virus could have helped cause the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) sweeping the globe.
…………….. Some people say SARS might have been the result of human and avian viruses mixing in Guangdong, China, where people live close to animals, but Osterhaus said this was just speculation. Pandemics of new influenza strains in 1956-1957 and 1967-1968 killed a combined 4.5 million people. "Up to now avian flu has never acquired the ability to transmit from one person to another -- if it does it could cause a large number of infections," World Health Organization spokesman Iain Simpson told Reuters earlier this week. "There have been a number of influenza pandemics over the centuries and the last one was in the late 1960's so there is a view that we're overdue another one, although that doesn't mean it's going to happen any time soon."***
Works like Ipecac.
The Oriental markets and restaurants are particularly targeted because many animals,both domestic and wild caught are sold live in these settings.
In the U.S.,some laws aimed at putting an end to the live trade have only been stopped because the people of Asian heritage were able to use the PC argument that the trade was part of their culture.
Stopping some of these repressive laws by turning the PC card against the leftists in these situations really agravated the animal rights nuts.
They will use any falsehood to try to end the use of animals for anything.
When there's a reason to kill,it should be done in a way that inflicts the least pain or fear possible.
In my experience,nearly any meat from an animal that hasn't been raised,caught or killed right is not going to be as good as meat from a critter that hasn't been stressed.
Although I kill a lot of animals,it's just a part of what I do.An easy life and death for any animal is important to me.
If live critters aren't treated well or are stressed,they will damage themselves and lose weight.This will cause a major loss in income to the handler.
Any animal I use in any way is treated like gold.To me the simplest reason to treat animals well is that there's just no reason at all to be mean and I couldn't stand to be around myself if I was like that.
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