Recently China's largest food delivery service eme.me has banned restaurants from using their service if these food establishments offer dog or cat meat on their menus.
When word of eme.me decision came down, dog-meat eating advocates unsurprisingly used their "It's tradition" subterfuge to defend their barbaric eating habits and excuse away the torture and killing of millions of stolen pets each year. Reporters fearful of being branded a racist will not challenge the validity when Defenders invoke this "Ancient Chinese tradition" to excuse away Asian countries that torture and slaughter millions of cats and dogs are each year. Doing even minimal research will show journalist that this "Tradition" excuse has very little basis in actual fact. The Yulin Dog meat eating festival taking place each year in China was created under the guise of celebrating the summer solstice, which takes place on or around June 20th each year, and each year journalists who are sent to cover this atrocity continually refuse to challenge dog-meat eating advocates when they confront reporters with "Why do you interfere with our traditions?" Knowing full well that the festival only dates back to 2009 these reporters are either spineless or fearful of being labeled a racist, so this flawed excuse is kept alive by gutless western reporters who will not challenge the validity of the "Its Tradition" claim. When the most infamous dog and cat meat-eating festival was launched in China, honoring the Chinese history was the furthest thing from these officials' minds. In reality, the festival was born only to make a quick buck for city officials who were anxious to appease their tax collecting masters in Beijing. The "Tradition" excuse was a quick fix to cover for the barbarity taking place each year. To accomplish their reasoning and to give this excuse a hint of validity, they needed to ignore hundreds of years when dog meat eating was outlawed and to pick and chose only the years and context of China's long and storied history that supported this ungodly practice. History not on their side At the height of the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE), dog meat was considered a delicacy. Yet, dog eating soon lost favor in the Sui-Tang dynasties (581 - 907 AD), when the dog eating had been rejected as an indecent habit. Subsequent dynasties also valued man's best friends as helpers and hunting buddies. Wildlife Planet research could not produce an exact date when China decided that eating your buddy was back in vogue or when dog eating people considered it as a "Chinese Tradition." For the past few years, Yulin officials refuse to even mention the festival, and hilariously some have even claimed that Yulin no longer has a dog meat festival. But walking through the town during 10-day summer solstice festival tells a different tale. Until 2015 dogs and cats crammed into small rusted steel cages were openly slaughtered in crowded marketplaces, on the streets, and most shockingly next to elementary schools. In 2016 the slaughter moved to the back room, but unfortunately for China, between 2009 and 2015, thousands of photos and hundreds of hours of tape was more than enough evidence to show the world the barbaric practices of the dog meat industry. The sickening display combined with China's reluctance to enforce health code laws already written in their law books has put many of its citizens' health at risk. China has more to fear from their own people, than the outside world In today's China dog and cat, meat eating is facing strong criticism from China's younger generation. Three decades of economic expansion have spawned a growing army of animal lovers and pet owners, now believed to be 50 million strong. As more and more young people move away from small villages and into larger cities, they look to companion animals like dogs and cats, for comfort in the absence of the traditional family unit. With their new found bond with animals, this new generation of Chinese sees cats and dogs as smart, thinking, feeling souls deserving of our respect and compassion. Most importantly, the new generation of Chinese has discarded the ridiculous "It's tradition" excuse and embraced the "friends, not food" mantra. Year after year as the world's outrage continues to build, China, Yulin, and the dog meat eating industry as a whole knows it's fighting a losing battle. China's leadership must come to grips with the fact that the blood money that Yulin sends them is worthless compared to the increasing moral awakening that public opinion polls are showing. China's President Xi Jinping needs to enforce health code laws and make the sellers of dogs and cats produce proper paperwork showing where these animals were obtained. President Xi can save face and not even have to expose his personal views on dog and cat meat eating to put an end to the slaughter forever. Since China has no dog meat farms in their country Xi can easily shut down the dog meat trade by demanding his country health officials to enforce current laws on the books. No culture is stagnant; it evolves and progresses and no matter which country you are talking about some traditions just don't belong in the modern world because we humans have evolved and thankfully, we have in some cases outgrown the barbaric traditions of our ancestors. If you liked our story, please help Wildlife Planet by sharing it with your friends |
|