there is no one I detest more than a person who would abuse an animal. Can I sign up without seeing the gore?

but no awful videos or anything. I can't handle those, either.

Just focus on the right side of the page and add your email address. That's it. Then the link will ask you to spread the word if you can.

Some cultural practices need to be retired. Everywhere in the world, not just China (but damn if Asia doesn't have some practices I'd like to see halted immediately - whaling, poaching for ivory and other animal parts, bear bile, shark finning, dog/cat eating....)

thanks to Chinese-American assemblymember Paul Fong (D-Cupertino).

I will also share with my many animal loving friends, and I totally agree that some cultural practices need to cease.

if not then selective caring 8s bullshit.

But this issue is about the dog meat festival. Then let's move on to the others.

And in all honesty, I can't say I totally disagree with people eating meat. What I vehemently disagree with is factory farming, gross overeating of meat and gluttonous indulgence, and the hideousness of slaughterhouses. If an animal is humanely raised and treated with dignity and kindness during its life, and then killed with absolutely no pain, while I won't partake, I wouldn't be as revulsed as I am by humankind's meat-eating culture.

My parents visited China back in 1985 and when they passed through a marketplace there were cages that had once held dogs. My mother was so upset - even though she hadn't seen anything but the cages - that she was still freaked out after they came home. And she wasn't even the biggest animal lover in my family, that was my Dad. What a horrible thing...

Why do Asians seem to have little empathy for animals?

I've traveled in China for 6 weeks. DH has been there 3xs; we have a dear Chinese friend. I only report what I know.

So, eating horse meat is equivalent to a general lack of empathy for animals, sez you?

What I am saying is that different cultures have culinary traditions that sort out animals as "meat" or as "beloved pets" in different ways than the United States.

Even within a culture, some classes of the population agree with the choice of an animal as "meat" while others look down on it.

I grew up eating pigs and cows which I can no longer do.

who are disgusted that we eat rabbits and squirrels, but see no problem with the underclass in their country chowing down on Fluffy..

When the Pacific Islanders set out to populate Micronesia, they took along chickens, pigs, and dogs. As you get to various islands, apparently some had deaths on the way in their canoes as some islands have all three, some have chickens and dogs, some have pigs and dogs, and some have pigs and chickens.

Why do posters pretending to be clever answer a question with poor attempt at making a point?

Perhaps because many of them remember a time of starvation. If you were watching your child starve to death Fido is on the menu.

And if over the generations you regularly have to resort to that measure it loses its repulsiveness.

Rice or corn are much poorer sources of protein than wheat. Asian and Native American populations then turned to other domestic animals for their protein. Europeans and Middle Easterners had wheat and ample grazing land for herds of cattle which allowed the Israelis and Arabs to disdain the pig as a source of meat. The most protein deficient societies often turned to "long pig" (cannibalism).

You share my crazy love of finding ecological explanations to current or past realities. I assume you have read Ecological Imperialism?

Thanks.

It is heartbreaking how cruel and stupid most of humanity is.

thank you to all who signed.