Cruelty cuts to the Bone

As the 2002 World Cup approaches, the Korea Animal Protection Society and International Aid for Korean Animals have made the world aware that about 6% of the Korean population eats dogs and cats who have been tortured or boiled to death, in the misguided belief that this gives the remains greater strength as a tonic. Older men eat dogs to keep sexual potency; older women consume "cat juice" to treat arthritis and osteoporosis. Now dog-and-cat-eaters are attempting to defend these practices with the assertion that foreign criticism is racist and hypocritical.

Even if some foreign critics are racists and hypocrites, this is not their campaign. Throughout Asia, where the Buddhist, Hindu, and Jain vegetarian traditions are each more than 3,000 years old, there has been growing opposition to dog-and-cat-eating for at least 20 years. Only for a few years surrounding the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul have non-Asians been prominently involved. As recently as mid-1999, when ANIMAL PEOPLE introduced KAPS and IAKA to the global animal protection community with the first of an ongoing series of prominent reports, most animal defenders in the west believed that Korea had abolished dog-eating with the passage of an unenforced law back in 1991—after which the few international groups which had been involved lost interest.

Despite the lack of outside help, extensive polling in Korea and China has recently found a huge shift underway in public opinion about dog-eating, mostly among people under age 40. This coincides with the improved education of the younger generations, and with growing freedom for women and dissidents in most of the nations where dogs and
cats are eaten. Young women, in particular, are making the abolition of cruelty to animals a priority as they gain a public voice. Neither is it accurate for dog-and-cat-eaters to assert that animal defenders ignore the horrors inflicted on animals killed for meat in the west. As far back as 1990, at least two surveys of more than 1,000 animal advocates found that more than 85% were vegetarian—and a 1996 survey found that the treatment of farm animals had become the issue of most concern to activists under age 45.

Of all the dog-and-cat-eaters' defenses, however, the one most offensive to me is the claim that it reflects racism. For me, the reason to oppose dog-and-cat-eating—or the cruel treatment of any animal—is the same as the reason to oppose racism. Racism, sexism, or speciesism always proceeds from the assertion that, "There is US, and there is THEM, THEY are unworthy of compassion, and THEY are all alike." As a middle-aged lifelong second-generation vegetarian, I have had extensive experience with being "them," on the receiving end of discrimination. Back when Americans of colour were often not served at restaurants, I was not served at restaurants. Decades later, when Americans of any colour were welcome, I was still unwelcome. As a schoolboy, the youngest in my class, I had to eat my meatless lunch as fast as I could, before gangs of meat-eating boys took it away from me and stomped on it, or put excrement into it. Then I had to fight to avoid having meat or excrement forced into my mouth. Suddenly one summer I grew nine inches. I was no longer the little guy with fast fists; I was the big guy. What does the big guy do? He protects the little guys. He does what he can to establish justice and decency. I have devoted my life to protecting both animals and human rights for that reason.

We humans are the big guys on Planet Earth. At one time, we may have been little guys, who felt we had no choice but to eat and oppress other beings, but as we become empowered, as individuals and as a species, we must leave that role behind and take up our duty to see to it that all people and animals, regardless of race or species, are treated with kindness and decency. This includes intervening to prevent any group from torturing another, even if the pretext is maintaining an ethnic or cultural identity.

Ethnic and cultural identities are at most skin-deep. Cruelty cuts to the bone.


I think there will come a time, and this is down the road a great many years, when civilized people will look back in horror on our generation and the ones that have preceded it: the idea that we should eat other living things running around on four legs, that we should raise them just for the purpose of killing them! The people of the future will say, `meat-eaters!' in disgust and regard us in the same way that we regard cannibals and cannibalism.

Dennis Weaver