I was reading this article about the hunt on cats being on the rise in China, because of their "elite" culinary status in Chinese culture and I'm sitting here wondering why chicken soup or beef barley is OK in most cultures, but not vegetable cat soup for instance? Most people would probably gag at the thought of eating cat or dog meat, but apparently not in Chinese culture, where they're on the high demand list as a delicacy.
Some say this sudden demand for cats is caused by bad economic times, which doesn't make sense to me, because usually when something is in high demand the price goes up too.
Are cats and dogs spared from the butcher's knife in western culture perhaps because of their level of intelligence and the ability to fight back? Or is it because human compassion gets in the way due to the many human-like personality traits cats and dogs possess, which other domesticated animals do not? Or could it be the level of self-esteem and hunger for power or control in a democracy vs non-democracy that people seem to be consumed with, so they take it out on animals? Sound crazy?
Sighhh, so many questions.
I can understand hunting animals for the sake of survival out in the jungle or when you're lost somewhere way out there in the middle of nowhere, but I fail to understand the persistent need to kill another living being purely for gourmet consumption in our modern day civilization, when we have an overabundance in alternative sources for nutrition.
''The police did what they could, but there's little they can do to stop or punish those traders from shipping live animals,'' Lai said.
Zhu Huilian, a nutrition and food safety professor at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, said people usually eat cat in restaurants, not at home.
''There's a famous soup called 'Dragon, Tiger and Phoenix,' '' Zhu said. ''It involves cooking snake, cat and chicken together. In winter more people eat cats as they believe it's extra nutritious.''