The Cruel Plight Of The St Bernard
"Beijing Youth Daily" of September 16, 99:
Good news, new food for the dinner table before National Day
With the improvement of living standards, people’s diet is changing. Dog meat is becoming a favourite. Due to the increasing market demand, the dog breeding industry is expanding in Beijing. Male Great Dane, St. Bernard, Tibetan Mastiff are chosen to be imported by Beijing HongDing Breeding & Development Co to hybridize with Mongolian dogs to create a new generation of meat dogs. The company set up a new breeding facility in KangXi grassland providing estimated 100'000 meat dogs per year.
Dog meat is fine, tasty and can warm the body. In order to guarantee the quality and hygiene of dog meat, the Beijing HongDing Breeding & Development Co. Takes the following measures: individual breeding, central slaughter and market. The slaughter facility is in the city of Chanping, killing 100'000 a year, Products include marinated dog meat and dog ribs. The company also provides stud dogs and offers job opportunities for laid off workers.
Terror: dogs stuffed into a cage (upper) and a St Bernard (lower) await their horrifying end at a Guangzhou market. It’s a practice Prof Song Wei (lower left) hopes will end soon
It’s the Year of the Dog, but that won’t save millions of canines from being served for dinner, as Angela Leary writes-
Maoshan Animal Market, Guangzhou, southern China
The dogs at Maoshan Animal Market huddle as one at the back of their enclosures. In one filthy cage, more than 100 crush together in wretchedness. It’s a humid spring morning, not cold, but many are shivering. It’s a different kind of warmth they are seeking. One by one, these trembling animals will be dragged out and slowly bludgeoned to death, while their terrified pack mates look on, cowering and whimpering, wondering which one will be next.
The market, on the outskirts of China’s bustling southern city of Guangzhou, supplies the surrounding restaurants with dog meat, a specialty dish favoured by well off provincials.
The locals believe the meat will taste better if, at the moment of death, the dogs are panic- stricken, electric with adrenalin.
So their death comes slowly. First a heavy blow to the snout with a rough-hewn truncheon resembling a baseball bat, then the dogs are left to absorb their pain for a minute or so, their cries curdling the blood of the other dogs in line.
Often they stagger up to their tormentors, tails feebly wagging, in the hope of a reprieve. But there’s no mercy here. The beating continues at a torturous pace until the dogs, in and out of consciousness, finally succumb to the blows.
Such is a dog’s life as the people celebrate the Year of the Dog.
Animals Asia Foundation, based in Hong Kong, is determined to make use of this auspicious year in the Chinese zodiac to push for a ban on dog meat.
Founder and CEO Jill Robinson says millions of dogs are brutally slaughtered in China each year. Most are deliberately tortured.
Other killing methods include electrocution and hanging. Some are boiled alive.”It’s absolutely heartbreaking,” Robinson says.
“Before they arrive at the markets, these dogs often spend three or four days on the back of trucks, crammed together in tiny cages. They get nothing to eat and they don’t even have access to water. If they’re lucky, they will be hosed down just to keep them alive. “
Robinson denies accusations of cultural imperialism from Westerners who say that for the Chinese, consumption of dog and cat meat is the same as eating lamb or beef.
“There is a very big difference. Herd animals have evolved to adapt better to live in groups, and farm animals in general have been genetically selected to adapt better to captivity and farming practices,” she says.
“We certainly don’t want to imply that livestock animals don’t suffer - they do - but dogs are carnivores and pack animals. Hierarchy is important. In markets, crammed into cages, the competition for food, females in season and the stress of seeing other dogs slaughtered leads to aggression and fighting.”
Disease is also rife among market dogs, Robinson says.
Sadly this is just one of the injustices for dogs in China.
Pedigrees are routinely tossed out of middle-class homes as new breeds become fashionable.
Starving strays are common on the streets and authorities have no interest in humane euthanasia.
Culling days are routine in southern provinces when bands of municipal workers take to the streets to bludgeon dogs - strays and pets - to death, sometimes in full view of their horrified owners.
Robinson, a Briton, who has been awarded an MBE for her work in animal welfare is seeping into the Chinese psyche.
“I feel the momentum for change is building and the great thing is that it’s coming from within China,” she says.
AAF has launched a China-wide campaign called “Friends or Food?” to tackle the problems of cruelty and neglect and specifically to end dog and cat eating.
Robinson has reason to be optimistic. Her group recently hosted the first China Companion Animal Symposium in Guangzhou and 32 animal welfare groups, representing about 250,000 people from around China, voted unanimously to push for a ban on the consumption of dog and cat meat.
“Imagine this forum happening 10 or five years ago. It simply would not have been possible,” she says.
The most obvious hurdle facing animal activists is the dearth of legal protection for companion animals in China. There is none.
Prof Song Wei, a lecturer in law at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, Anhui province, says the country’s legal structure is so complex and vast that the most effective way to tackle the problem is to amend existing legislation at the local level.
Such laws focus on controlling animals and limiting numbers, but ignore welfare.
“Along with legislation we need to see a shift in attitudes and a change in our culture,” Prof Wei says.
“We must combine a loving heart with the law.
“There has been much progress even in the past five years. Abuse cases today always spark huge public outrage. There is much more awareness of animal welfare.”
A new generation of Chinese are leading the charge, says young and urbane Li Yunjun.
Li started Private Pet Home in Panyu, just south of Guangzhou three years ago.
His organisation rescues strays, but focuses on education.
“My parents eat dog and cat meat even though they know about the cruelty,” Li says.
“They do not accept what I do. They don’t understand why I should care about animals.”
But Li says very few young, urban people would eat dog and cat meat now, as “they see it as ugly and unacceptable”.
The practice is more common in the countryside, where men boast about the amount of dog meat they can consume in one sitting.
Li says he is optimistic the practice will eventually die out, but it will have to be driven by a change in attitudes, not just laws.
“Corruption is still a huge problem,” he says.
“Laws would help, but those that want to keep the industry going just need to pay money.”
Guangzhou native Christie Yang Min says that the change, while slow, is unstoppable.
Yang, who co-ordinates AAF’s China PR efforts, says the internet is a major factor in spreading the word and allowing animal welfare groups to offer mutual support.
“Co-operation is really important for any group working in a country as big as China,” she says.
Even in cosmopolitan Hong Kong, ignorance is widespread.
“At first I was shocked,” says Briton, Anneleise Smillie, AAF’s education director.
“Many children genuinely believe dogs have no feelings, that they are incapable of feeling emotions or even physical pain.”
She describes a recent exchange with children at a middle-range school.
“Can Mao Mao feel sad?”
“Noooooo!”
“Can Mao Mao feel happy?”
“Noooooo!” the children chant again, giggling at the absurdity of the notion.
Mao Mao is a golden retriever on one of his first outings with “Professor Paws”, a programme run by AAF to encourage in Chinese children a lifelong respect for dogs — and to rid them of their crippling fear and misunderstanding.
Under a program run by AAF, native English-speaking volunteers take their dogs into schools to give children the chance to chat in English and to pat the dogs.
Often it is the first time they will have touched a dog.
AAF executive director Annie Mather says it is often ignorance rather than deliberate cruelty that leads to the mistreatment of dogs.
“Many Hong Kong people take their dogs for walks by carrying them because they don’t want them to get their feet dirty and make a mess in their flats,” Mather says.
“They don’t realise that dogs need exercise.”
“One woman in Mainland China, who adored her little dog, washed it every day in dishwashing liquid. She really thought she was doing the right thing and couldn’t understand why it was losing its fur.”
It is in mainland China that the biggest challenges remain. Wu Jun of the Zhuhai Animal Protection Association in Guangdong province, says it is time he shared a shameful secret to illustrate the extent of ignorance that he and others fighting to end cruelty are facing.
“My wife and I once went to a restaurant and saw meat being sliced off the animals while they were still alive,” Wu says, struggling to continue. “I have not been able to tell this to a foreigner before. Dogs and cats can’t speak, but we can. So we must speak out even louder.
A cat begs mercy from her captor... Terrified cats crammed tightly into
cages are hauled off to a meat market in Guangzhou.
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A past letter sweep to Chinese and Beijing-Olympics officials contributed to
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Animals torn to pieces by lions in front of baying crowds: the spectator sport China DOESN'T want you to see
By DANNY PENMAN - More by this author » Last updated at 20:57pm on 5th January 2008
The smiling children giggled as they patted the young goat on its head and tickled it behind the ears.
Some of the more boisterous ones tried to clamber onto the animal's back but were soon shaken off with a quick wiggle of its bottom.
It could have been a happy scene from a family zoo anywhere in the world but for what happened next.
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Children feed goats before the 'show' starts. One that has been 'bought' by a visitor is carried off
A man hoisted up the goat and nonchalantly threw it over a wall into a pit full of hungry lions. The poor goat tried to run for its life, but it didn't stand a chance. The lions quickly surrounded it and started tearing at its flesh.
"Oohs" and "aahs" filled the air as the children watched the goat being ripped limb from limb. Some started to clap silently with a look of wonder in their eyes.
The scenes witnessed at Badaltearing Safari Park in China are rapidly becoming a normal day out for many Chinese families.
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Once the goat is carried from its pen, it is swiftly thrown into the lion enclosure
Baying crowds now gather in zoos across the country to watch animals being torn to pieces by lions and tigers.
Just an hour's drive from the main Olympic attractions in Beijing, Badaling is in many ways a typical Chinese zoo.
Next to the main slaughter arena is a restaurant where families can dine on braised dog while watching cows and goats being disembowelled by lions.
The zoo also encourages visitors to "fish" for lions using live chickens as bait. For just £2, giggling visitors tie terrified chickens onto bamboo rods and dangle them in front of the lions, just as a cat owner might tease their pet with a toy.
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The ravenous big cats quickly attack the goat and start to tear it limb from limb, all in the name of 'entertainment' for the Badaling zoo visitors
During one visit, a woman managed to taunt the big cats with a petrified chicken for five minutes before a lion managed to grab the bird in its jaws.
The crowd then applauded as the bird flapped its wings pathetically in a futile bid to escape. The lion eventually grew bored and crushed the terrified creature to death.
The tourists were then herded onto buses and driven through the lions' compound to watch an equally cruel spectacle. The buses have specially designed chutes down which you can push live chickens and watch as they are torn to shreds.
Once again, children are encouraged to take part in the slaughter.
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The lions tear the goat to pieces within seconds of landing in the enclosure
"It's almost a form of child abuse," says Carol McKenna of the OneVoice animal welfare group. "The cruelty of Chinese zoos is disgusting, but think of the impact on the children watching it. What kind of future is there for China if its children think this kind of cruelty is normal?
"In China, if you love animals you want to kill yourself every day out of despair."
But the cruelty of Badaling doesn't stop with animals apart. For those who can still stomach it, the zoo has numerous traumatised animals to gawp at.
A pair of endangered moon bears with rusting steel nose rings are chained up in cages so small that they cannot even turn around.
One has clearly gone mad and spends most of its time shaking its head and bashing into the walls of its prison.
There are numerous other creatures, including tigers, which also appear to have been driven insane by captivity. Predictably, they are kept in cramped, filthy conditions.
!Zoos like this make me want to boycott everything Chinese," says Emma Milne, star of the BBC's Vets In Practice.
"I'd like to rip out everything in my house that's made in China. I have big problems with their culture.
"If you enjoy watching an animal die then that's a sad and disgusting reflection on you.
"Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised by their behaviour towards animals, as the value of human life is so low in China."
East of Badaling lies the equally horrific Qingdao zoo. Here, visitors can take part in China's latest craze — tortoise baiting.
Simply put, Chinese families now gather in zoos to hurl coins at tortoises.
Legend has it that if you hit a tortoise on the head with a coin and make a wish, then your heart's desire will come true. It's the Chinese equivalent of a village wishing well.
To feed this craze, tortoises are kept in barbaric conditions inside small bare rooms.
When giggling tourists begin hurling coins at them, they desperately try to protect themselves by withdrawing into their shells.
But Chinese zoo keepers have discovered a way round this: they wrap elastic bands around the animals' necks to stop them retracting their heads.
"Tortoises aren't exactly fleet of foot and can't run away," says Carol McKenna.
"It's monstrous that people hurl coins at the tortoises, but strapping their heads down with elastic bands so they can't hide is even more disgusting.
"Because tortoises can't scream, people assume they don't suffer. But they do. I can't bear to think what it must be like to live in a tiny cell and have people hurl coins at you all day long."
Even worse is in store for the animals of Xiongsen Bear and Tiger Mountain Village near Guilin in south-east China.
Here, live cows are fed to tigers to amuse cheering crowds. During a recent visit, I watched in horror as a young cow was stalked and caught. Its screams and cries filled the air as it struggled to escape.
A wild tiger would dispatch its prey within moments, but these beasts' natural killing skills have been blunted by years of living in tiny cages.
The tiger tried to kill — tearing and biting at the cow's body in a pathetic looking frenzy — but it simply didn't know how.
Eventually, the keepers broke up the contest and slaughtered the cow themselves, much to the disappointment of the crowd.
Although the live killing exhibition was undoubtedly depressing, an equally disturbing sight lay around the corner: the "animal parade".
Judging by the rest of the operation, the unseen training methods are unlikely to be humane, but what visitors view is bad enough.
Tigers, bears and monkeys perform in a degrading "entertainment". Bears wear dresses, balance on balls and not only ride bicycles but mount horses too.
The showpiece is a bear riding a bike on a high wire above a parade of tigers, monkeys and trumpet-playing bears.
Astonishingly, the zoo also sells tiger meat and wine produced from big cats kept in battery-style cages.
Tiger meat is eaten widely in China and the wine, made from the crushed bones of the animals, is a popular drink.
Although it is illegal, the zoo is quite open about its activities. In fact, it boasts of having 140 dead tigers in freezers ready for the plate.
In the restaurant, visitors can dine on strips of stir-fried tiger with ginger and Chinese vegetables. Also on the menu are tiger soup and a spicy red curry made with tenderised strips of big cat.
And if all that isn't enough, you can dine on lion steaks, bear's paw, crocodile and several different species of snake.
"Discerning" visitors can wash it all down with a glass or two of vintage wine made from the bones of Siberian tigers.
The wine is made from the 1,300 or so tigers reared on the premises. The restaurant is a favourite with Chinese Communist Party officials who often pop down from Beijing for the weekend.
China's zoos claim to be centres for education and conservation. Without them, they say, many species would become extinct.
This is clearly a fig leaf and some would call it a simple lie. Many are no better than "freak shows" from the middle ages and some are no different to the bloody tournaments of ancient Rome.
"It's farcical to claim that these zoos are educational," says Emma Milne.
"How can you learn anything about wild animals by watching them pace up and down inside a cage? You could learn far more from a David Attenborough documentary."
However pitiful the conditions might be in China's zoos, there are a few glimmers of hope.
It is now becoming fashionable to own pets in China. The hope is that a love for pets will translate into a desire to help animals in general. This does appear to be happening, albeit slowly.
One recent MORI opinion poll discovered that 90 per cent of Chinese people thought they had "a moral duty to minimise animal suffering". Around 75 per cent felt that the law should be changed to minimise animal suffering as much as possible.
In 2004, Beijing proposed animal welfare legislation which stipulated that "no one should harass, mistreat or hurt animals". It would also have banned animal fights and live feeding shows.
The laws would have been a huge step forward. But the proposals were scrapped following stiff opposition from vested interests and those who felt China had more pressing concerns.
And this is the central problem for animal welfare in China: its ruling elite is brutally repressive and cares little for animals.
Centuries of rule by tyrannical emperors and bloody dictators have all but eradicated the Buddhist and Confucian respect for life and nature.
As a result, welfare groups are urging people not to go to Chinese zoos if they should visit the Olympics, as virtually every single one inflicts terrible suffering on its animals
"They should tell the Chinese Embassy why they are refusing to visit these zoos,' says Carol McKenna of OneVoice.
"If a nation is great enough to host the Olympic Games then it is great enough to be able to protect its animals."
