"In particular, the draft suggests people caught eating dog or cat meat be jailed for up to 15 days and fined 5,000 yuan (£450), while businesses would be fined between 100,000 to 500,000 yuan (£9,000 to £45,000). Pet lovers' associations have sprung up in Chinese cities over recent years, with one liberation group last year ramming a truck full of caged cats to rescue them from being shipped to southern restaurants.
While many Chinese enjoy rich dog meat, especially during cold winters, some object to the practice in some regions of beating dogs to death to release the blood into the meat.
The China National Native Produce & Animal By-Products Import and Export Corporation backed the initiative, which it believes will improve overseas perceptions of Chinese exports.
Others insisted a ban on dog and cat meat was unrealistic.
'Banning such custom by law is inappropriate and unable to work,' said Xu Huiqiang, chief of wild animal protection in Jiangsu province, where a dog meat recipe has been listed as a piece of cultural heritage.
An official of Leping, a city that has a traditional catering industry based on dog meat, said that the local economy and people's lives would be terribly hurt by such a law.
'Cooking them alive must be punished but which meat to eat should be people's own choice,' said a commentary on Xinhua Daily in Nanjing. 'Some people in China still can't afford meat. We should not blindly copy Western values.'
But one online protester named 'Yuxiang999' posted on Xinhuanet.com: 'Eating cats and dogs is a shameless barbarian thing. Anyone with humanity would not kill these loyal friends of ours.' "
My thoughts - here -"I think for a non-democratic country, raising GDP is directly proportional to nationalism and adherence to "traditions" since the economic success feeds to their self-fullfling prophecy. It gets worse when they make up impromptu traditions to fit their current nouveau riche lifestyle. We in the west will make matters worse if we try to preach them (which will only feed their nationalism). The only way out of this is show them the importance of animal welfare which has been always the part of their culture, tradition and history. We need more Chinese scholars in the west to work with animal welfare activists in China to bring about this change. (Insights from behavioral economists will help honing this process)
My thoughts - here -"I think for a non-democratic country, raising GDP is directly proportional to nationalism and adherence to "traditions" since the economic success feeds to their self-fullfling prophecy. It gets worse when they make up impromptu traditions to fit their current nouveau riche lifestyle. We in the west will make matters worse if we try to preach them (which will only feed their nationalism). The only way out of this is show them the importance of animal welfare which has been always the part of their culture, tradition and history. We need more Chinese scholars in the west to work with animal welfare activists in China to bring about this change. (Insights from behavioral economists will help honing this process)
I bet a person like you Mark can find some smart behavioral economists in your academic circles to initiate this process - " How to improve animal welfare in China using Chinese tradition."
This is very important since more powerful the Chinese become more the people of world will try to emulate them (Coca Cola, anybody?) and we don't want that happen.
Simply bashing China will not improve anything.
Importance of democracy with growing economy is very important for animal welfare - Bear rescue in India speaks volumes. http://www.ted.com/talks/kartick_satyanarayan_how_we_rescued_the_dancing_bears.html
Even with so much deplorable poverty in India, there good souls who tirelessly work on animal welfare with minimum hindrance from the government a.k.a democratic government. "
P.S: This theory applies only to pets and wild animals. Growing economy as we all know is a doom for farm animals. "
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