Cruelty is wrong of course. It feels wrong even before thought sets in, because it goes against everything that defines the potential of human agency: love, passion, courage, humour, and so on.

The thing is, animal cruelty happens everywhere in the world. Ignorance happens everywhere in the world. What you want to focus on?

Now of course statistically speaking you can say, that it is more an issue in some countries than others, but it will still be that: statistics. Life isn't statistics. People aren't statistics.

Man can not even comprehend fully what a living being is, what life is. How can you expect man to treat animals like real living beings then?

Anwyay. I don't think that sort of topic will give any answers really except for sharing some perspectives maybe.

My main perspective on this is simply ignorance. And ignorance as I said happens all around the world. We're all in this together. It's like the old duality problem. If there are more "ignorant" countries allowed to treat animals poorly, maybe it's because there are "non-ignorant" countries making a point of having little boutiques where you can pet your chihuahua for 100$ an hour?

PS: In case someone doesn't catch my drift. I am not implying that it's bad to spend thousands of dollars on your pets. I am of course hinting at the great divide in wealth, education and so on, between countries.

ファブリス wrote:

The thing is, animal cruelty happens everywhere in the world. Ignorance happens everywhere in the world. What you want to focus on?

I guess this is a broad topic despite my intention to focus on the comparisons of East and West (assuming such designations are valid in the first place).

But people can talk about whatever comes to mind I guess.

ファブリス wrote:

PS: In case someone doesn't catch my drift. I am not implying that it's bad to spend thousands of dollars on your pets. I am of course hinting at the great divide in wealth, education and so on, between countries.

Certainly, I think a lot of the pain, suffering and cruelty (to both humans and animals), can be alleviated if the gap between the poor and the rich was smaller.

Like the Chinese people who work on the Bear Bile farms in the link in my first post, they were somewhat distressed by the crying of the cub yet they persist in the business due to money.

The same problems are across cultures. We tend to divide them because that is what we are taught. There is no distinction between the East and West. The further disjoint an individual is from the action, the further disjoint they are from the facts relating to how the animal product was produced.

i do think that part of it is lack of knowledge, but also there are difficulties in those countries with law as well.

In the west, animal protection agencies lobby the government to create more laws protecting animals, or go through the court system and argue the cases, setting precedents.

Well, i'm certainly no expert in law, but i think things work fairly differently out east. For example, Europe and America have laws stating that chimpanzees must not be used in any kind of medical testing nowadays. In Japan, there is no such laws protecting chimpanzees... what happened instead was that the scientists and researchers convened and made an agreement between themselves that they would no longer use chimpanzees in medical experiments, as it's unethical.

In one way, i think it's quite amazing & beautiful that they acheived this on their own just through diplomacy and relationships between scientists, but on the other hand, it shows how difficult it is to influence legal regulation in things like that. And obviously, legal regulation offers protection in ways a "gentlemens agreement" can't, so it's not ideal.

I don't know anything about Korea, but i don't imagine lobbying or taking legal action are really possible in China to any large degree, and almost certainly even less than they can in Japan.

Only continuous, sustained, and enforced pressure from the West can change these cultures. If they want to do business with us, then we have to insist that they don't slaughter dolphins, suck bile from live bears, all that stuff. But then, look what we do cows, pigs, and chickens. Look what we do indigenous populations! We are no better. It's just that they don't feel like they need to tell us what to do.
Japan has a strict hierarchy of kicking and being kicked, animals are the bottom of the heap. If you come back as an animal in Japan, better hope you come back as a dachshund or chihuahua, or you're screwed.
Arguing for animal rights in Japan would be like arguing for vegetable rights in the West. Most people would think it's ludicrous, especially the older people. And there's a few of those here, let me tell you. Nothing will change here until all these old people die, and they live longer than anyone else on earth every has, so it might be a while.
My old next door neighbors had a dog, big malamute beast, which would bark all the time. In the year I lived there, they never walked it once, never took it off its 1.5 meter chain. It would go days without food or water, usually only until I would give it something, even though it drove me nuts with its barking. Every now and then the bitch grandmother would come out and beat it for ten minutes with a broomstick. I called city hall, and in my crap Japanese told them what was going on, and the guy said if it's barking all the time it must be okay.
I asked my girlfriend if there was an RSPCA or something. Of course not. Finally, a month before I moved out, the owner, the grandfather, hanged himself, and the family had the dog put down the next week.
Just another happy ending here in Japan.

I  think a lot of animal lovers are unable to accept that humans are another animal - an omnivorous one that is part of the food-chain. If we weren't evolved to eat meat we wouldn't have the biology to handle it.

I think killing and eating a freerange animal is actually far less cruel than keeping a caged pet (bird, hamster, dog in Japan, etc).

Regarding hunting, which is more cruel, (thinking in terms of deer) culling the herd to sustainable size via regulated hunting which results in (usually) a quick death for the  animal, or allowing the population size to grow beyond what their living area can sustain, causing mass starvation among the herd the next winter?

Obviously an over-simplification, and of course, the problem of not enough space for the animals is due to the population and industry of humans in the first place, but I'm not convinced by the whole "hunting is evil" propoganda.

Yeah, hunting is really done for sport and for fun.  He's right though, we can't let deer populations increase too much.

Actually, the reason the deer population is so high in America is that humans pretty much destroyed the population of predators that ate deer.  The two most obvious populations that were killed off when Europeans came were wolves and members of the same species--native Americans.  We also made the bear population much smaller.

So now, even though the deer have much less land to live on, their population is about as high as it's ever been.  Deer end up destroying ecosystems in some areas because they eat tree seedlings.  When there are too many deer new trees can't grow, and it screws up a whole bunch of other animals like song-birds.

Also, deer kill more people in American than any other animal, due to car accidents (although, they can't really be blamed for that).  They also spread lyme disease.

There should be a lot less deer than there are.

We wouldn't last long eating meat that hasn't been cooked. The ability to cook and eat meat helped make humans what we are. But we can't use that as a justification to eat meat anymore (ie. we need it to survive, evolve, etc) because we no longer don't. We can get all the nutrition we need from the vegetables, grains, and multivitamins found in any supermarket. Western diets have a lot more meat in it that any caveman ever ate.
It tastes good. But so many terrible things are associated with it, cruelty to animals, exploitation of the poor, disease, degradation of the environment, it's getting really hard to justify eating it just because it tastes good.

nadiatims wrote:

Humans are naturally plant-eaters

Actually I still occasionally eat meat, but this article presents some compelling evidence.

I know you weren't responding specifically to me, but whether or not humans are better adapted to being herbivores or omnivores is unrelated to whether or not it is ethical to eat meat.

(And if I thought it had anything to do with the question at hand, various things on the site could be criticized.)

Last edited by Tzadeck (2011 December 26, 12:33 am)

I hope the rest of you are right and that the squid in the Japanese restaurant is already dead. Still, when the squid was wiping soy sauce from its eye, it looked pretty alive.

IceCream wrote:

In Japan, there is no such laws protecting chimpanzees... what happened instead was that the scientists and researchers convened and made an agreement between themselves that they would no longer use chimpanzees in medical experiments, as it's unethical.

In one way, i think it's quite amazing & beautiful that they acheived this on their own just through diplomacy and relationships between scientists, but on the other hand, it shows how difficult it is to influence legal regulation in things like that. And obviously, legal regulation offers protection in ways a "gentlemens agreement" can't, so it's not ideal.

If what you say is true, then it is certainly quite amazing that this positive result has come about through self-regulation (a libertarian ideal), rather than the result being imposed by another party (ie. government).

I suspect however, that this positive self-regulation is an exception to the rule (profit at all costs).

IceCream wrote:

I don't know anything about Korea, but i don't imagine lobbying or taking legal action are really possible in China to any large degree, and almost certainly even less than they can in Japan.

"Unfortunately" and naturally, human rights will improve in China before we start seeing improvements in animal rights. So it will be a long wait yet.

Jarvik7 wrote:

That said, there apparently are places where you can get sashimi served from a live fish that is gasping on the plate, but it is very uncommon and very expensive (and it's a Korean dish I believe). Most Japanese people don't even know it exists let alone eat it.

Well, that's good that it's rare.

Jarvik7 wrote:

Also, see the west where lobsters are typically boiled alive, people kill animals for fun (hunting) and factory farming raises animals in horrible conditions (esp. veal, foie gras) on a much larger scale than anywhere in Asia. Pet abuse is a problem everywhere.

Stop making this an ignorant/hypocritical us vs them issue.

If you read my first post completely or if you read it again properly, you'll see that in the 4th paragraph, I already mentioned some of these things so I'd say I'm neither ignorant nor hypocritical.

Although on the surface, the thread appears to be an "us vs them" issue, when it comes to animal welfare, it's really us (humans) vs them (non-human animals). However, I still think the comparisons between "West" and "East" are still valid because there ARE notable differences (and of course many similarities).

Mennon wrote:

Only continuous, sustained, and enforced pressure from the West can change these cultures. If they want to do business with us, then we have to insist that they don't slaughter dolphins, suck bile from live bears, all that stuff.

"If they want to do business with us (the West)"

Even though you recognise we are no better (in your next paragraph), I have an issue with this statement because business is a two-way transaction. Sure, they (the East or whoever) want to do business with us. But just as much, we want to do business with them. Everyone is complicit when it comes to animal cruelty in the name of profit. Whether it's the business who wants to do business in China due to less stringent worker protection laws (hence cheaper costs) or the consumers back home who vote with their wallet by purchasing the business' products made from the blood and sweat of cheap Chinese workers (or animals).

However, the advantage of the West I think is that we do have the luxury of caring and lobbying for the welfare of animals which can only be a good thing and should be promoted.

Mennon wrote:

Nothing will change here until all these old people die, and they live longer than anyone else on earth every has, so it might be a while.

Without going into details, and whether you realise it or not, I think this would be a positive outcome also for the United States.

Mennon wrote:

Japan has a strict hierarchy of kicking and being kicked, animals are the bottom of the heap. If you come back as an animal in Japan, better hope you come back as a dachshund or chihuahua, or you're screwed.
Arguing for animal rights in Japan would be like arguing for vegetable rights in the West. Most people would think it's ludicrous, especially the older people. And there's a few of those here, let me tell you.

Your anecdotal evidence aside, do you have any other proof that backs up your general assertion? This seems new to me and sounds more like China rather than Japan.

Jarvik7 wrote:

I  think a lot of animal lovers are unable to accept that humans are another animal - an omnivorous one that is part of the food-chain. If we weren't evolved to eat meat we wouldn't have the biology to handle it.

There are some that would dispute that humans are naturally carnivores/omnivores.

Furthermore, what is interesting about the meat we eat is that we very rarely eat it raw (the proper way) like the way we eat fruits and vegetables. Instead, we roast it, we bake it, we toast it, and we fry it. We cook the meat to the point that it doesn't actually look like meat anymore.

Jarvik7 wrote:

I think killing and eating a freerange animal is actually far less cruel than keeping a caged pet (bird, hamster, dog in Japan, etc).

Although I agree to an extent:

First thing: I guess it depends on how we kill it (painlessly or with a lot of pain) and how we eat it.

Second thing: Just because one thing is less bad than the other doesn't justify it (two wrongs don't make a right).

Betelgeuzah wrote:

Still, vegetarians want us to give up meat and eat crops as well as a dozen other ingredients like nuts to make up for the lost nutrients. When we could just eat yummy meat and be done with it.

How about the more inevitable future: We could just eat yummy synthetic meat that is indistinguishable from real meat but might as well be real meat, and be done with it?

Betelgeuzah wrote:

This "animals are sacred" ideology is strictly a result of our culture.

Although some might take it too far, I prefer to believe that is also a result of our empathy.

Jarvik7 wrote:

You are making it sound like hunters are performing "humanitarian aid" when that is really a side effect. The core is killing animals for fun, just like rich people go on safari to up the exclusivity factor.

I would prefer if culling was done by people who care about the sustainability of the population of animals, rather than people who are simply bloodthirsty.

The former would also probably do a more effective and efficient job too.

Jarvik7 wrote:

I never claimed hunting was evil (nor do I think it to be), but it certainly sounds just as bad as or worse than what those morally inferior Asians are doing. The point of bringing it up was to shine the mirror back at westerners pointing fingers at others.

Reminds me of China whenever we (the West) criticize them for anything.

This whole politics thing is so juvenile "nah nah so are you!"

Mennon wrote:

Western diets have a lot more meat in it that any caveman ever ate.
It tastes good. But so many terrible things are associated with it, cruelty to animals, exploitation of the poor, disease, degradation of the environment, it's getting really hard to justify eating it just because it tastes good.

Earlier in my post, I mentioned how humans don't eat raw meat. We cook it.

Another interesting point I would like to make: Does meat actually taste good? Or do we disguise the blandness of meat by using herbs and spices, sauces, and marinades?

qwertyytrewq wrote:

Jarvik7 wrote:

I never claimed hunting was evil (nor do I think it to be), but it certainly sounds just as bad as or worse than what those morally inferior Asians are doing. The point of bringing it up was to shine the mirror back at westerners pointing fingers at others.

Reminds me of China whenever we (the West) criticize them for anything.

This whole politics thing is so juvenile "nah nah so are you!"

I see nothing wrong with that when the criticism is ALWAYS framed as the west being superior morally/developmentally. If the focus was on "xyz is bad, for example in China and France and blah blah" then I would leave it as that, but instead it's always  "Japanese people are barbarians, goddamn backwards yellow people I'm glad thousands died in the tsunami and we should nuke them again".

That is not exaggeration, that is the typical line of the Sea Shepherd supporter. The exact same comments happen regarding soccer, so it's clearly just racism/xenophobia tacked on to token activism.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2011 December 26, 1:28 am)