Let’s face it. We have all always known that many Asian nations practice utterly abhorrent acts of animal cruelty every day.
We hear about the sadistic treatment of captive bears as repugnant vivisectionists harvest hall bladder from them while alive as they concoct potions which they sell in order to give impotent men a hard-on.
We hear of the dog festivals where tens of thousands of animals are choked in horrific conditions only to be slaughtered in the most brutal of ways including skinning and boiling them alive.
Now with it looking more and more likely that “wet markets” which specialize in the sale and live slaughter of exotic animals was where the Coronavirus pandemic originated, people are being forced to see what has been happening over there.
Don’t let people look away! Don’t dismiss this as something which is out of sight and out of mind.
Don’t use the excuse of cultural sensitivity in order to say we can’t or shouldn’t try to change this. Modern societies have learned to practice humanity in our treatment of animals and there is no longer any excuse for other societies to start doing the same.
Hell, even if you don’t care about the welfare of animals and only have self-interest in mind, you should support ending these horrific practices in Asia. These markets are filthy and it is surprising that we haven’t seen more new diseases springing from them than we have already.
We have more immediate things to deal with as this pandemic brings the world to it’s economic knees.
When today’s crisis does finally pass, we need to ask ourselves how we can prevent these things in the future and how we can make the world a better place.
A good place to start would be in having some serious international pressure being placed on any nation which embraces animal cruelty in the way so many do today. Sanctions, tariffs, whatever it takes. We will be in a position to put pressure on these nations and we should damn well do so.
I am no radical animal activist by any means. I was as annoyed and disgusted by the idiots who trespassed on an Albertan turkey farm last year as anybody is. I have no problem with people eating meat. It’s not to my taste and never will be but I don’t think eating dog meat is any more cruel than eating beef. The issue is with how we treat these animals in raising and slaughtering them. We have no need to be cruel and we can no longer tolerate it.
As humans we are higher on the chain than animals. This allows us to consume animals and trade them as property. In being higher on the evolutionary scale than animals, we possess (or should possess) empathy and we should be obligated to practice it.
There will be little good coming from the pandemic of today. One positive which we could foster though is a movement towards the end of animal cruelty. The whole world will be better for it.
