Thursday March 11, 2010
Eating dogs and other tortured flesh
Along The Watchtower
By M. VEERA PANDIYAN
It is hypocrisy to condemn the eating of dogs and cats if we don’t think twice when it comes to consuming other kinds of meat
AS A veterinarian, he should have known better than to have made such a suggestion. More so being the deputy director-general of the Veterinary Services Department.
Dr Ahmad Suhaimi Omar has landed in hot water for proposing that municipal council dog pounds be allowed to sell the animals to those who like eating canine meat.
He said this at a forum on effective animal pound management called in the wake of media reports about the appalling conditions at the Selayang Municipal Council dog pound.
“Do we have to keep the dogs at the pounds forever? They are animals, just like chicken or goats,” he said, adding that allowing the sale of animals in the pounds for their meat, could help check the unmanageable increase in the number of strays.
His remarks drew howls of outrage, spawning new threads of animal cruelty postings against Malaysia on the Web.
The forum, in which representatives of 12 local councils took part, eventually decided on these steps for better animal pound management.
They include educating pet owners on their responsibilities, closer liaison with the Veterinary Services Department, cooperation with animal welfare groups to catch and shelter strays humanely, micro-chipping dogs for ownership identification, stringent laws on licensing, and enforcement.
But as tasteless and shocking as Dr Ahmad Suhaimi’s remarks were, he does have a point.
Most people have a natural repulsion to the eating of dogs, but if viewed objectively, such practices are mostly linked to cultural norms.
In places like China, the two Koreas, Vietnam and even parts of Thailand, it is acceptable food. And it’s not just the authentic hotdogs.
Cats, too, are eaten in many places including the Ivory Coast, Australia and even Italy, which is globally renowned for its classy cuisine.
Last month, Italy’s celebrity chef Beppe Bigazzi, 77, was barred from the country’s state television after he said there was nothing wrong with dining on felines.
He insisted that cat casserole (cat-erole?) was a savoured “delicacy” in his home region of Valdarno, Tuscany. “I’ve eaten it myself and it’s a lot better than many other animals. Better than chicken, rabbit or pigeon.”
He suggested that for optimum flavour, the meat be “soaked in spring water for three days” before being stewed.
As thousands of irate viewers phoned the show’s producers to complain, and cat-lovers hissed and spat at Bigazzi in cyberspace, a popular children’s author in Australia came to his defence.
Kaye Kessing, who is also a chef, proposed that Aussies should do the same. Her condition was that only one type of felines be slaughtered for the dining table – the country’s pesky feral cats.
Feral cats have been killing small marsupials towards extinction and causing serious ecological problems.
This goes to show that people tend to easily place their own values and societal norms when viewing such issues, instead of looking at other creatures as fellow animals.
Besides their obvious instincts, animals have their own intelligence as well as capacity to feel pain and suffering.
Human beings slaughter and eat many kinds of domesticated animals – cows, buffalo, pigs, goats and birds like chicken, turkey and geese.
We often pretend that we kill livestock “humanely” when the reality is quite the opposite.
Most of the beef, pork and chicken meat we consume are from animals kept in small enclosures, force-fed and injected with hormones for optimum growth before their slaughter.
How many people have seen what goes on inside the slaughterhouses, and looked into the faces of the animals as the knife goes in?
As the author of Eating Animals, Jonathan Safran Foer, writes in his book: “When we eat factory-farmed meat we live, literally, on tortured flesh. Increasingly, that tortured flesh is becoming our own.”
It is pure hypocrisy to say eating cats and dogs is wrong when not thinking twice about ordering hamburgers, fried chicken, mutton varuval or bak kut teh.
In January, China proposed a ban on eating cats and dogs after pressure from the country’s middle class.
Under the proposed anti-animal maltreatment law, offenders could be fined up to US$700 (RM2,327) and jailed 15 days. The debate is still going on, with many Chinese opposing the proposed law.
To come back to our own increasing numbers of stray dogs and cats, it is about time that we look at long-term solutions to resolve the basic problem.
Educating pet owners to be responsible has certainly not been effective. The numbers of animals being brought for spaying and neutering is negligible.
But there are many Malaysians who genuinely care about animal welfare and, unlike in the past, there are now several organisations with active volunteers.
All of these bodies share a common problem – lack of money. Malaysians are charitable folk, but there is little sympathy when it comes to giving money for animals.
Much can be achieved if the Federal Government provides adequate annual grants to animal welfare NGOs, which run shelters. The Veterinary Services Department can monitor how the funds are spent.
Most of our local councils have failed miserably when it comes to strays, as the emphasis has always been on shooting strays or locking them up in pounds.
Would you bring this up, Dr Ahmad Suhaimi?
> Associate Editor M. Veera Pandiyan feels guilty for not being able to spend much time with the SPCA Malacca, of which he is a committee member.
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