Chinese Astronauts ate Dog meat

Nice!

I do believe that dog is a popular food product in certain parts of Asia, just as Horse is popular in France.

Whether it's right or wrong is another matter and probably open for discussion.

 

Chinese Astronauts ate Dog meat because it's good food... especially farm raised stock.

Clean American values by golly... be hating on folks cause they live by a different menu of lower animals than primates...

I have Sioux blood in me, and I know my ancestors were cursed by white settlers for having camp dogs for supplimental meat.

I've been overseas into Asia several times... and I have had some tasty pooch... I still passed on the bugs though, and I don't look down on those that will eat the bugs... I just ain't particularly attracted enough when I understand they will knowingly eat bugs, to wanna let my lips kiss gals that do... but that's just me.

As for eating dog, or horse, or pork or beef or any fowl or creature from the waters... I figure if they ain't working, then they may be food...

 

"usual livestock animals" is still a matter of culture. Even our own selection provides many channels for serious disease.

When expressing shock about other cultures eating what we consider to be household pets, we should remember how other cultures react to our choices -- one that would never harm a cow, several shocked that we would eat filthy pork, and one shocked that we would allow filthy dogs into our homes as pets.

I will complain when immigrants raid local pet shelters or catch wandering pets for food. But my complaints stop at our borders.

 

I say feed the homeless with all the dogs and cats that the pound / animal shelters kill.

 

Have been to various Asian countries, and have sampled animals that used to go "woof woof" and even "meow meow."

I personally would never turn a dog or cat into supper, but perhaps if I was starving then I would.

It's rather hypocritical to point a finger to a nation that considers what we define as a "pet" to be supper instead.

Much as it's hypocritical to express mock outrage at this practice, when so many "pets" here are routinely abused in quite horrific ways, neglected, and abandoned

I personally consider my fellow humans as the ultimate "white meat." If times really got tough, it would probably be a bad idea to be alone with me

 

Very well said, and spot-on with what I would say. :cheer2:

 

How dare they eat something that we wouldn't!

 

I'm not sure the known diseases of the confined farm animals are any better. Didn't SARS initially come through this channel?

Most of the world's marine protein consumption is from non-farmed sources.

I do agree that all the animals we handle, for food or otherwise, should be treated humanely, and my concern for that does not stop at the border. I don't see slaughter for consumption, per se, to be inhumane, but there are plenty of inhumane practices out there.

 

There is no truth in asserting the primacy of any one
culinary tradition...
culture...
or for that matter, religion.

 

Hmmm... So, it would be wrong to kill someone in order to take his money, but it would be okay to kill someone in order to eat him, provided you killed him without unnecessary pain?

 

From Guns, Germs, and Steel, 1997, Jared Diamond:

Chapter 11 Summary: Lethal Gift of Livestock

The major infectious "killers of humanity" in recent history were
acquired from animals [I will need further proof of this sweeping
claim]: smallpox (from cowpox or related), flu (from pigs and ducks),
tuberculosis (from cattle), malaria (Falciparum at least comes from
birds), bubonic plague, measles (from cattle rinderpest), [AIDS from
monkeys], and cholera. Pertussis was acquired from pigs & dogs.
Farmers have increased exposure to the germs of their livestock. In
addition, keeping pets, human intimacy with animals, and animal fecal
contamination in crowded sedentary urban conditions contribute to the
increased exposure of humans (and acquisition of partial immunity or
resistance in the food-producing culture).

Some endemic diseases are shared by humans and animal reservoirs:
yellow fever, yaws, hookworm, bubonic plague, etc.

The sequence of creation of epidemic illnesses confined to humans is:
(1) Infections in animals which occasionally (sporadically) infect
humans by animal to human transmission (e.g., leptospirosis,
brucellosis, cat scratch fever, psittacosis, tularemia), evolve to (2)
transient human epidemics that are communicated between persons
but then die out (e.g., kuru [sic], Fort Bragg fever, O'nyonh-nyong
fever), then (3) sustained epidemic human diseases that have not yet
been shown to die out (e.g., Lassa fever, Lyme disease, AIDS), then
(4) exclusively human epidemics (e.g., smallpox, measles). The
exclusively human epidemic diseases all require large numbers of
closely packed people (i.e., millions) in order to be sustained by
shifting from one area to another, and are called "crowd" diseases--
they could not arise in small hunter-gatherer cultures. Successful
recurring epidemic (not endemic) diseases: (1) spread quickly and
easily, (2) cause acute illness, (3) leave immune survivors, (4) are
restricted to humans (not soil or animals). Examples include mumps
(first attested 400 BC), pertussis (first described 16C), smallpox (first
attested 1600 BC), etc.

Many disease manifestations serve the needs of the infecting
organisms in providing a means of increasing transmission--e.g.,
rhinorrhea and sneezing. The transformation to exclusively human
diseases involves changes in the intermediate vector (e.g., human
body lice for typhus) and/or changes in the microbe (e.g., reduced
virulence as in syphilis).

Newly introduced infections (initially smallpox, measles, flu, typhus;
later, diphtheria, malaria, mumps, pertussis, plague, TB, and yellow
fever) decimated up to 95% or more of the Mississippian Indians,
Peruvians, Mexico Indians, etc. Khoisan, Pacific Islanders, and
Aboriginal Australians were also decimated by imported diseases.
Only syphilis may have traveled from New to Old World (its origin is
still uncertain, perhaps from yaws). The paucity of domesticated
animals and their noncuddly characteristics prevented New World
acquisition of human epidemic diseases from their own domestic
animals.

Although native epidemic tropical diseases did not deter the invading
Europeans in the New World [is this true?], certain endemic diseases
like cholera, yellow fever (endemic in African monkeys), and malaria
did impede colonization in tropical Asia, Indonesia, New Guinea, etc.
[Also, imported infectious diseases such as yellow fever and malaria,
once established, impeded spread of Europeans in portions of the
New World].

From here.

Criticism here.

 

I wonder if the dog meat was in a tube, NASA style?

Tom

 

No, SARS did come from wild cats probably. Mad Cow disease, however, does come from farm-raised cattle (spread mostly because they were fed by-products of other infected cattle, so that's a strike against cannibalism).

Pigs carry trichinosis, unless properly cooked, and that's probably why a lot of cultures don't allow pork.

I come from a part of the country where we eat a lot of venison, and some people eat bear, raccoon (pretty sure) or beaver. Rabbits and squirrels used to be popular, but I haven't heard of this in my generation. I don't have a problem with hunting when you consider that's probably the most humane way most of these animals could die. Just don't hunt them to extinction.

 

If we meet in person someday, I'll plan ahead and be carrying a can of SPAMâ„¢. :madgrin:

 

Okay Tony, mind explaining the first picture for those who didn't watch the Cove?