Whose God is it anyways? posted a tip so arresting, I had to read it for myself…and then inflict it upon you. 😀 Blame him, he started it! Via The Telegraph:
Packs of stray dogs which roam the streets of New Delhi should be rounded up and sent to Korea for making soup, one of the city’s exasperated councillors has suggested.
Wow, that’s some level of exasperation. Any Delhi-area mutineers want to chime in about this?
India’s capital is suffering from a 300,000-strong plague of feral dogs who scavenge the city’s open rubbish dumps, hunting in packs and terrorising cyclists and pedestrians who venture into the city at night.
At a meeting to canvass measures to curb stray dog numbers ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games one local councillor, Mohan Prashad Bharadwaj, ventured the “Korean option” after saying he’d read that nation was fond of dog-meat.
Um, I guess that’s…innovative.
A dog-meat soup called boshintang is popular in Korea, especially on the three “dog days” of summer on the lunar calendar. Koreans believe the meat helps boost stamina and virility.
I swear, every unique food is meant to be the culinary equivalent to wiagra. This next idea is so funny, it’s cute:
Another councillor wondered if the dogs could be drugged during daylight hours “so that they keep sleeping all day long” while a third suggested rounding up the animals and trucking them into the countryside.
The extreme nature of the suggestions reflects a growing impatience with the city’s inability to combat the stray dog menace after it emerged that a three-year sterilisation drive advocated by animal rights activists had failed.
When I first read this article, I wondered about the “Bob Barker“-option, i.e. spaying and neutering…until I got to that part.
Mindful of Mahatma Gandhi’s adage that “a country is known by the way it treats its animals” the city is hoping to avoid the kind of brutal cull that Athens resorted to ahead of the 2004 Olympic Games.
So shipping dogs to Korea for soup is a better way for India to be known? Not judging, just surprised, that’s all.
However the dogs are a serious health hazard, with more than 200 Delhi residents dying every year from rabies contracted through dog bites.
Yeah, I don’t think drugging them during the daylight hours or shipping them off to the “country” (wtf, like people in rural areas are immune to rabies?) is going to work. It’ll be interesting to see how this gets resolved.
Whose God is it anyways?
Question for you : If the Delhi administration seriously undetook a neutering/spaying program ,I am assuming the population os stray dogs would come down as time goes by and the dogs die natural deaths. But what in the interim, isn’t some sort of mass reduction ( killing /exporting) the only immediate solution? (I want to clarify that I am not trying to provoke anything here -its a sincere question and you seem to have knowledge on this subject. )
runa, a mass cull only works if there is a real commitment to spay/neuter. usually, it’s a very ill-thought out, inhumane, short-term solution to a long-term problem that stems mostly from people’s attitudes and awareness or lack thereof. you treat the symptoms and the causes continue (open rubbish tips, poor hygiene conditiosn for people and animals). bali has had a fairly successful spay/neuter program without resorting to mass culls, as far as i know.
humane society international, a few years ago, said it was helping with a successful program in delhi, so i don’t know what happened. probably human apathy, lack of govt. support (this is a very important part), lack of funding etc. if you speak about animal welfare, people erroneously assume you’re doing so at the expense of human welfare when the two are tied together. so i question whether there is a real commitment or whether the commonwealth games will come and go and the problem will return after a convenient mass cull. i suppose now that the problem has reached these proportions they will have to do something, can’t afford to upset those tourists/athletes (because let’s not pretend that the councillor actually cares about the effect of stray dogs on the poor people of delhi). the funny thing is, a mass cull will cause more bad pr for the commonwealth games in india than any tourist seeing a stray dog. this story and the councillor’s outlandish suggestions is already all over the newswires and in publications around the world.
and the problem isn’t just strays. i think it’s misleading to label all these dogs feral.
WGiiA , Thanks for the detailed reply. I guess a holistic approach is the only solution. I feel really bad about the condition of strays in India but I feel even worse about the fact that so many people have to live in intolerable conditions in slums etc. Hopefully, improving hygiene levels will help all around. For example: Shulabh Shuchalyas opened in various cities in India and made a small dent in the overall cleanliness ….
Reform the dogs by teaching them dog yoga
I don’t like the idea of eating or euthanizing any animal for our convenience, especially a dog. (I am a life long vegetarian – not even fish.)
However, I do not judge others for their food choices since I believe it is a free world.
This is a difficult situation for the wild Delhi dogs and the city staff. Unfortunately, since the dogs are wild, it might be very hard for people to adopt them. (Can adult street dogs become tame and house broken??)
Spaying and neutering the dogs seems like an expensive solution, but it sounds like the most humane way to deal with the problem. But it is expensive, time consuming and probably not practical.
I love dogs, but to me culling and licensing is the only humane option. Life for a street dog is hellish, I don’t think there is anyway to adopt and reform them after a lifetime of negative experiences with humans. There’s too many puppy mills too, some breeds seem to be a trapping of success for the upwardly mobile
“But it is expensive, time consuming and probably not practical.”
it’s actually been done fairly successfully elsewhere and will probably prove to be more practical, less expensive in the long-run. But then again, the long-run is not important to politicians. perhaps the money that was spent bidding on the commonwealth games and sprucing delhi up for the games should have been spent on improving the conditions for the poor and on spay/neuter etc. before ambitiously bidding for games and then panicking about the city’s image at the last minute. if the aim is to impress foreigners, i can guarantee you, from firsthand experience living in a tourist-dependent country that relies on image, that tourists don’t respond well to mass culls of people or animals just to make them feel better about their stay.
And Delhi won the bid to host the commonwealth games nearly four years ago.
There’s WSD (Welfare of Stray Dogs) in Mumbai and CUPA (Compassion Unlimited Plus Action) in B’lore. Does anyone know of a similar organization in Delhi? I’d think that neutering is the best possible solution, given all the options.
I’ve eaten dog several times. They are great with mustard and relish.
I grew up watching wild animals (as a life-long vegetarian, from the first breath I drew independent of the womb)and never keeping them as pets, so I do find it hard to empathize with those who feel that dogs are a special category of mammal and must be euologized, martyred and placed on a pet pedestal.
Is not malnutrition a fairly large problem in India–especially among the urban poor? Would they not benefit from additional protein? (and no, i’m not suggesting that western elites descend upon Delhi to puree street dogs and distribute the resultant mash via troughs) I agree that a mass cull (or even a mass spay/neuter campaign) invokes nightmarish images of Sanjay Gandhi wielding the castration kuhkri and leaving a swath of eunuchs in his path, but couldn’t this be an opportunity to focus on the nutritional needs (and hygenic deficits) of the poor in Delhi and solutions to those problems?
and not to mention that our troops ( http://www.dawn.com/2004/04/10/int7.htm ) are eating dogs and monkeys in indian jungles. so maybe the indian govt. should deploy them in delhi during the commonwealth games as apart of joint excercises.
Nothing ominous about the Korean option. Koreans eat dogs and the French eat horses is common cultural knowledge even in India. The Koreans tried to ban the practice in restaurants during the Seoul Olympics and it was big news at that time. Dog meat is not just a Korean delicacy though and is eaten in many places as this link shows. China could be a bigger market:)
You are all sick puppies, I think.
“Delhi Dogs” would be a great brand for export, however,
If you could get them past the vets.
Else, it would be like Chinese seafood into the US.
Koreans might buy it, who knows.
“but couldn’t this be an opportunity to focus on the nutritional needs (and hygenic deficits) of the poor in Delhi and solutions to those problems?”
aren’t you assuming that the urban poor would want to eat dogs in the first place? there wouldn’t be 300,000 stray dogs if the urban poor wanted to eat dogs, i’m sure they have the initiative to kill and eat them. it’s not unusual for the poor to keep pets too. why would they want to eat something most middle-class indians wouldn’t? culturally they are the same people.
why send to korea? there’s starving ppl in india? doggie Vindalho anyone? tandoori dog?
Maybe Micheal Vick can help out; he has some creative ideas on how to get rid of unwanted dogs.
I am a dawg of the desi pedigree who first came to the USA to solve the Y2K bug. Mebbe it was my dawg breath or my oversized glasses or my BO or my Toyota Corolla DX but I neva was able to get any dates. I have to say the best put-downs were from da yaybeeceedee pedigree – often forcing me to retreat tail-tucked to my 1 bedroom studio apartment (with pool and gym) in Sunnyvale which I shared with 4 other desi dawgs.
Along came 2002 and I was a jobless dawg who returned back to desh. And, now dey want to neuter me, ship me to Korea, drug me?
What’s a mateless, homeless desi dawg supposed to do?
PS: Anyone willing to sponsor a visa for a Java beans programmer?
Dude, I’m with pingpong on this. I wouldn’t want to eat a feral cow (I know, a stretch of the imagination), nor would I want to eat a rabid one. The latter certainly can’t be appropriate in terms of health concerns, and I have no idea about the health consequences of the former. Why would poor people then want to eat mangy, diseased strays?
“Why would poor people then want to eat mangy, diseased strays?”
why would poor indians, who are generally not used to it, barring some exceptions, want to eat a healthy dog?
Personally, I think the whole thing is funny. It is great to see politicians think outside the box even if it sounds all kooky. It gets boring when they have to watch they say. I am not saying they are correct in their suggestions or it sounds reasonable. But it is funny to read it.
As far as why anyone would eat stray dogs? I dont find that implausible. WHy does anyone eat Haggis? Or cockroaches in Thailand? Or rats? Or PLACENTA as i saw in some clip from England where some stupid bitch gives a placenta pate party. (HUMAN PLACENTA!).
WHat about drinking the milk of cows that look deformed because htey ahve been raised to just give us milk and their udders look like they are going to burst and they become bowlegged.
Also I was watching on TABOO on NAtional Geographic HD where some middle class AngloIndian lady was so desperate to find something called kutti or whatever. It is lamb foetus. She claimed it was this great tasting delicacy and goes to great lengths to get it.
Indian HOT DOGS. but are they kosher?
Ugh, I have met women who do this. It really grosses me out. What grosses me out more, however, are people who then turn placenta into a facial cosmetic or skin regimen.
Also, re: the list, I don’t eat haggis, cockroaches, rats, or dairy, so I absolve myself. (I’m just being tongue-in-cheek, but I do get a bit grossed out when I think of milk)
WGiiA……?
Maneka Gandhi.
Camille, DETAILS PLEASE. I always wanted to know what compels someone to eat HUMAN PLACENTA!!!!!! Did you give them a puzzled look. Did they volunteer the info? Were you offered it? DId you make a funny face when offered? Did you ask them ” are you guys fucking mad?”
here’s Malaysia dealing with a similar situation:
“Malaysia has defended its decision to allow the export of macaque monkeys for meat and scientific research purposes, saying it will help curb their booming population in cities where they attack people and raid homes for food.”
Continued here: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/08/17/asia/AS-GEN-Malaysia-Exporting-Monkeys.php or you can search “malaysia macaque meat” in Google News
Crocodiles. There’s no stray dog problem in Coral Gables, FL.
http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/florida/news-article.aspx?storyid=89252
Whilst spending some time in Tamil Nadu many years ago, a stray dog came over and licked me. That was right after my dad (he’s a doc) had given me a lecture about how dangerous Rabies was and how a patient had died recently from rabies etc. That lick freaked me out, but I’m real clever. I knew that if the dog had rabies, it would die in 10 days; that could have been right or wrong, but that’s what I knew. Anyways, I knew that I had my job cut out; I decided to stalk that pack of stray dogs for the next ten days. Every morning and evening, I’d scour the roads until I found the pack and saw my “licker” well and healthy; only then would I sleep. The dogs soon knew that something was afoot and I knew that they were watching me watching them. It was something along the lines of the hunter becoming the huntee. In those ten days I learned many things about a dog’s life and I realized why they called it a dog’s life. I even picked up a fight (on the seventh day, I think), with a truck-driver who tried to run-over my dog and almost ruined my elaborate plans. At the crack of dawn on the eleventh day, my heart beating faster than usual, I went in search of him. There was a tear in my eye when I spotted him peeing on his favourite lamp-post, in the pink of life; well, as pink as a dog’s life is allowed. Since this was a special occasion, I bought some biscuits and tossed it at him – looking back, that must have been Stockholm Syndrome in it’s most feral form. He lived for many more months before the dog-catchers from the Municipality got him. Ah, memories…
“WGiiA……?”
just pointing out that despite the apparent suggestions that india’s poor deal with their nutritional deficiences by eating dogs, thus killing two birds with one stone, they might actually want to have a say in that:) i think they’d rather eat like the rest of us. there’s no shortage of food in india. there wouldn’t be 20 million strays or so if people really wanted to eat dogs. the idea that the poor/hungry will eat anything to survive is also misguided. i’ve seen people starving whilst there are equally emaciated dogs/cats loitering in the background. some will eat other humans to stay alive, some will eat rats and others will just starve to death. likewise, during the tsunami, people were hungry, but they didn’t all resort to eating anything or wearing anything for that matter. so well-meaning middle and richer indians who dumped all their “junk” clothes, nevermind that they were totally inappropriate for the people, were taken aback to see that the poor can actually have discriminating tastes.
and, at the risk of sounding preachy (but then again people here get more worked up about all sorts of pet peeves from sari borders on books to people marrying trees to shashi tharoor on saris….., so i’ll risk it), i wouldn’t have posted this story if i thought it would have resulted in such tasteless jokes about unnecessary cruelty to dogs (and to pre-empt comments about india has so many problems, think about humans before animals etc. etc. etc., the last time i checked, compassion is not a limited resource). i don’t find anything funny in solving human-made problems by inflicting needless suffering (because i’m pretty sure shooting, poisoning and strangling would soon come into play in trying to catch 300,000 dogs) or by making assinine suggestions about what to do with them.
Please don’t say that–I’m glad you posted it. You consistently post relevant, valuable links on the news tab and we are grateful for it.
I saw a documentary on the University of Maryland channel when I was at Bethesda Naval Hospital. I did not want to look at it but a Corpsman in my room was watching it. It was recorded using a hidden camera and quite graphic.
This was recorded at a province in China. There were cages full of cats (not feral) they were docile. They were held by the neck using a long device and dropped in a large pot of boiling water. The carcas was then cleaned and the fur removed. The meat was sold as food. I felt naseau for days, and anytime I think of it. I adore cats and one lives with me.
Crocodiles taste great, the meat is tender. Its expensive though, I had crocodile stir fry in Cairns, Australia.
I think it’s the perfect solution to send these dogs to Korea for meat.
Sure, then we can send half-a-billion Indian’s to Germany to make soap out of them. I’ve heard it does wonders for the complexion.
A good good idea would be to ship these feral dogs to North Korea where people are actualy starving, not South Korea, where the young are rejecting this dog eating practice.
In the spirit of Jonathan Swift, sounds like a capital plan! Then we can solve the homeless problem in Mumbai by shipping those pesky slum folk off to the cannibals in Papua New Guinea, where people are actually starving as well. But alas, our poor pavement dwellers are too sickly and probably don’t have enough meat on them to make for a good meal.
Dogs and cats don’t belong on the table. An animal rights group sent me a flyer one time with a picture of cat tied next to a boiling pot in some market place in Korea. The cat looked terrified and despairing–you could see it in its eyes. They make some kind of soup where they put the poor animal in alive. A lot of Koreans themselves protest this and one woman in particular is waging a campaign against the use of dogs and cats in this way. There’s been a lot of worldwide protest mail sent to the Korean government. Dogs and cats have been bred for thousands of years as human dependent companion animals and usually there has been a taboo about eating them except in time of famine. I respect a lot of Chinese medicine but some of it is fixated on using animal parts, often rare (in the sense of numbers) and often inhumanely. I don’t think these countries are any crueler than anybody else, but their sense of pragmatism requires that they put feelings aside in order to use the animals in the ways necessary. I wouldn’t ship a dog to Korea.
“Please don’t say that–I’m glad you posted it. You consistently post relevant, valuable links on the news tab and we are grateful for it.”
sorry if i sounded too judgemental. i guess we’re all set off by different things.
Another idea: make the dogs transgenic with rhino dna so that they grow phallic looking horns on their snouts. Then alert poachers and the impotent men of the world.
Also, typo alert: the 2nd word in the title should be spelled “Omniverous”.
And other animals like cows, chicken and pigs do? If so, then why? As I see it, it’s a cultural/social issue (eat some animals, venerate others) rather than any intrinsic, universal property that some animals should be pets, and others eaten. If you live in the US, I can understand your revulsion at cats being boiled, but I could also argue that at least the Koreans are open about what they do to cats. Try visiting a CAFO in the US and taking pictures.
people in india eat dog too, in the northeast as well as some parts of the south. a plate of “bow bow biriyani” is supposed to be nature’s viagra according to some.
I lived in Seoul for 20 months and I just want to say that eating dog soup is a rare thing. Seoul is highly developed and it’s more common to see dog boutiques of the sort that Tokyo is famous for then restaurants that serve dog soup. Bosintang is actually very expensive and the type of dog meat used is from a wild mountain dog; I don’t think South Koreans would be at all happy with being seen as content with eating rabies-infested dogs! Korean men eat it only on the bespoke hottest day of the year to prove how hard they are (for stamina), whereas ‘Samgyetang’ – a chicken broth made with ginseng and jujubes is much much more common.
South Koreans, in my experience, were always quick to establish that they wouldn’t touch a bowl of dog soup with a barge pole. Korean cuisine is really delicious and healthy and the restaurants in Seoul were always very hygienic in spite of being so cheap.
strays r a problem but shippin em aint right dey shud round some up i guess n check 4 rabies if sum hav em put dose 2 sleep n da 1s datr gud breed em a bit n giv em food n u can ship away as pets cuz i no lota indian breeds of dogs r rly cool n lyk i bin der n i loved em u no but not delhi str8 up pind guy here
hmm, now if we could only figure out something to do with all of those pesky stray cows in delhi……
ooh sacrilege!
If so, then why? As I see it, it’s a cultural/social issue (eat some animals, venerate others) rather than any intrinsic, universal property that some animals should be pets, and others eaten.
It is the boiling alive that is ghastly, I don’t care where it is done. I am still haunted by that flyer so I won’t be visiting any web sites of that nature. I am aware of the humane farming movement and publicitiy about slaughter house here. At least here such a thing would be against the law or insane. If you want to eat dead dogs and cats, and you capture some poor beast unlucky enough to be nobody’s pet, just do it a favor and kill it first before you tuck in.
Hey, if the cows are taken off the streets, who is going to eat all the rubbish on the streets? 😉 My brother mentioned an incident (he’s a vet) where a cow was operated on and there was a HUGE ball of plastic bags inside the cow’s stomach making it sick.
is it really expensive to have a pulic sanitation system (in india)? What would be the benefit in terms of human health? Does the state of garbage removal have any public health consequences?
Puli, mi amigo. I am no more qualified than you are to answer those questions. Like you, I live in the US. To be fair, last time I was in New Delhi, there were many public signs warning people about the negative effects of plastic bags (and to not throw them on the streets) but I don’t know if they have brought about any positive changes.
Pravin, that information was definitely volunteered to me, and they ate it by boiling it and making a soup and then cutting it up into small pieces. Yes, really. While being unwillingly regaled, I tried to avoid vomiting. You will be happy to note I have an iron-clad stomach in that respect. Personally I find the idea disgusting, and no amount of arguing re: the health/spiritual benefits of placenta-eating could really make me feel otherwise unless I was under the influence of high-class narcotics.
Wait, Malaysia is exporting macacas for scientific research? That’s gotta be a human rights violation 😉
WGiiA, no worries, I was just confused because I was trying to say the same thing (that I don’t think poor people would want to eat dogs, let alone strays, and that it’s actually kind of a disgusting double standard on hunger/malnutrition that ignores larger the larger phenomena driving systematic poverty, and by extension, systematic hunger/malnutrition).
luna, I’m with Amit. While boiling a cat alive may seem disgusting, any exposure to the factory farming / meat-processing industry in the U.S. is equally disgusting, as far as I’m concerned. And what is boiling lobster alive? Isn’t that just as bad? Does it really matter what animal it is? I think we only feel differently about it when it’s an animal we feel, culturally, should not be eaten (e.g. dogs/cats).