I see nobody in the comments actually bothered reading the article. It’s not that cat meat is illegal, it’s that they were passing it off as pork and beef. Also some speculation that the cats might have been stolen
Also some speculation that the cats might have been stolen
Almost has to be the case. There is a reason no one farms cats as meat, they are obligate carnivores that will eat more meat than they ever produce. It isn’t economical to produce cats for meat if you have to actually feed them. It only makes sense to “harvest” them wild on the streets or from kitten mills, shelters, vets, wherever you find spare cats in China.
Framing animals for meat only really makes sense if those animals eat lower on the food chain. Turning grass / grains into meat makes sense. Turning meat into meat doesn’t, especially since the cats would pretty much have to be eating more desirable meat that they produce. Imagine feeding pork, fish, and chicken to cats in order to make cat meat.
That’s where the stolen rats come in…
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It’s a fairly well known and reputable Singaporean newspaper, FWIW
I was feeling the same way, but maybe machine translated rather than machine written?
Looking at a bias site, it looks like they aren’t known for just posting nonsense, though I guess this could be anti-Chinese propaganda:
anti-Chinese
Anti-China *
Straits Times is a Singaporean newspaper, and Singapore is a majority-Chinese country. As a Chinese myself, it stings when people automatically assume I’m a China national. This is pretty similar to Jews having to clarify that Israel does not represent them.
Note that I’m not actually commenting on the article, no idea about its accuracy.
I’m trying to get your point. But a jew indicates a person of Jewish religion. In most dictionaries “Chinese” will mean “someone or something from China”. I don’t know what the word meant before the nation China arose or if there are ethnic meanings to it, but words mean what people understand them to mean, that’s language, so Chinese kinda means “from China” today. That’s why America now kinda means the country and democracy means republic or other form of majority-rule representative democracy 🤷 (the two lost words I miss the most)
In most dictionaries “Chinese” will mean “someone or something from China”.
You’re not wrong, and there’s the problem. There are around 50M people of Chinese ethnicity living outside of China. Most of us were born and raised outside of China, and have little to no actual connection to the nation. In many cases our families migrated away from China generations ago. Unfortunately, China is all too happy to claim all Chinese people worldwide as a monolithic culture and suppress whatever bits and pieces they don’t agree with. In the same way that Israel uses their reputation as THE Jewish country for political points, so does China.
Me, I’m not a nation-state, so the best I can do is raise a tiny bit of awareness wherever I go, that just because I’m ethnic Chinese, does not mean that I love Pooh Bear (well I do love the original one, but that’s a different story). Hence I’ll happily spend time explaining to new acquaintances that yes, I’m Chinese. But no, I’m not from China. Maybe one day the dictionary definitions will change. shrug
It’s dangerous to confuse a national identity with an ethnic one. But I grant you, it’s nations who are at fault with claiming the terms and other ones by acknowledging them.
But aside from that (and I just wonder), is there such a thing as a Chinese ethnicity? I always imagined China was pretty diverse, ethnic-wise. With the northern mountain people, the coastal people the western people (I don’t know names or terms) being quite different from one another… Is that not true?
I always imagined China was pretty diverse, ethnic-wise. With the northern mountain people, the coastal people the western people (I don’t know names or terms) being quite different from one another
You’re correct, but think of it in the sense of ‘Caucasians’. You can break them down into subgroups that largely correlate to specific geographical regions, but as a group they’re still pretty distinct and recognisable. Of course, things like this tend to get fuzzy around the edges, but that’s biology for you.
I think there’s a super group Chinese people are part of like caucasians, I don’t remember the exact term
Yes, its totally unreasonable for people to conclude that a person who self-identifies as “Chinese” is from China.
It actually is. There’s about 50M Chinese people worldwide who AREN’T from China. That’s a pretty significant number. Even moreso online, since the majority of people in China have no access to social media like this. In my part of the world, citizens of China are referred to as ‘Mainland Chinese’ or ‘Chinese nationals’. Chinese in itself is an ethnicity, and it would be nice if we could get that distinction more widely recognised so the CCP would stop using us as political pieces.
I get how colloquially “Chinese” may refer to those being ethnically Chinese. However, for ppl who aren’t from the Asian region, “Chinese” means “Mainland Chinese”. Imagine if Barack Obama said “I’m African”. He’s ethnically African, who is American, which is called “African American”, (which is specific to descendents of slaves, as their exact point of origin in Africa was lost unfortunately).
Anyways, the point is, perhaps referring to urself as “ethnically Chinese” when communicating with the international community would avoid a lot of confusion.
perhaps referring to urself as “ethnically Chinese” when communicating with the international community would avoid a lot of confusion.
I do make the distinction when it’s relevant, as I did in this case. The original point was to point out the difference between anti-Chinese and anti-China. That’s a pretty significant difference, similar to anti-Israel vs anti-Semitic. Particularly in this case, where the source itself is from an ethnically-Chinese newspaper.
Ahh… Sorry, if I missed that. Just a lil tired today…
It reads ok in a proper Singlish accent
100% this.
If using cats as feed animals is illegal, they should reference the laws, and have quotes from the police officers.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_meat Cat meat is meat. Different cultures have different viewpoints on it. this article should contextualize about the culture the story is from.
From the article, the crime is not that they are selling cat meat, but that they’re mislabelling it as pork and beef
if they “rescued 1000 cats” from being sold as pork meat, that means at least 1,000,000 cats are sold as pork every day… this is just a little show for the newspapers…
so if you’re actually in China right now eating what you think is “pork”, Bon Appetit i guess
if they “rescued 1000 cats” from being sold as pork meat, that means at least 1,000,000 cats are sold as pork every day
What kind of logic is that? Why stop at a million, why not a billion.
this is China… maybe you don’t understand how big China is, and how many people live there… how many servings of “pork” fried rice get served every day… or how their law enforcement works… only the crooks who don’t pay the cops enough get caught…
You’re telling a Chinese guy he doesn’t understand China. Nice mansplaining (racesplaining?).
I’m pointing out the ridiculousness of drawing assumptions and calculating frequency of events from a single incident. Yes, I’m sure it happens. How frequently it happens is harder to say. It’s as if somebody sneezed and you declared an epidemic is happening in your town. One data point is an anecdote, not data.
oh you’re Chinese, that explains it… hey do you know the Chinese Military’s primary capability in war? it’s the ability to send millions of men to die, and not care… the Russians use the same strategy, but they don’t have quite as many bodies to pile up…
Have we moved from millions of cats to millions of cannon fodder, now? That aside, I’m not sure what point you’re trying to get at.
i just wanted to watch you be cavalier about it
Chinese, but not a China citizen. Fuck the CCP. Hopefully someday China’ll have actual civil rights.
Hello racist. Nice of you to introduce yourself. Now I can make note of you, and next time I see you, I’ll remember to ignore you
What app are you using that has this neat tagging feature?
Boost
you go ahead and make your little computer do whatever makes you feel safer
Okie 🥰
it’s the ability to send millions of men to die
Isn’t that the whole point of war? See which side ran out of men/women faster.
that’s exactly how the Chinese see it, yeah… in the West we study von Clausewitz, who said that military power is an extension of politics… von Clausewitz was part of a time in the West called The Enlightenment… the Chinese have yet to participate in it… they’re still a few hundred years behind mentally…
it’s the ability to send millions of men to die, and not care
I actually looked it up. It’s air power and cruise missiles.
Why is it worse to eat a cat than to eat a pig?
It’s not, but if it’s being sold as pork it’s a problem
Cats are friends.
Pigs are way way nicer animals than cars. Cats are evil and grumpy. A pig is cheerful and friendly
Which cat hurt you so much?
Pigs eat people. My cat can actually help me craft boats.
I’d like to hear more about this feline boat building endeavor.
Because a pig is smarter and cats are devious minions of satan
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Exactly. The title read to me like “look at those good police saving the cars from being killed for meat”. How about the millions of pigs that get slaughtered to be sold as pork meat. We don’t care about them?
It’s both bad. So good news the cats were saved.
pigs are just asking to be eaten
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I mean I’d eat cat if you just labeled it cat.
What i don’t understand is how any meat can be passed off as both pork AND mutton, two very different types of meat.
I’m just wondering how you get enough meat off a cat that it’s worthwhile. Most livestock are herbivores because herbivores are larger and much easier to feed. Cats are obligate carnivores, even if you’re feeding them scrap meat you’re going to wind up with them eating far more meat than they produce and I can’t imagine that they produce much usable meat. It just seems like it would be easier and cheaper to just raise actual pigs than to try and get the same amount of meat off of a bunch of cats.
I doubt they are farming the cats so much as collecting them from the streets and everywhere else.
Even so rounding up a bunch of cats still seems like the most high effort way to get meat compared to literally any other animal. Even just talking about wrangling strays, dogs seem like a better choice because then you at least get a bit more meat. Cats just don’t seem like they would have enough usable meat to even be worth the effort of butchering them. Unless these are some especially chunky feral cats, all the ones I’ve seen are basically just fur and bone.
It’s pretty easy to trap feral cats. Feral dogs are less common and harder to deal with. It really only takes bait as a recurring expense, at about say 10 cents per cage to get 1-2 pounds of meat that is worth at least $1per pound is pretty good return.
They probably also get their children to do it and the cost of meat there is probably a good bit more expensive compared to income than somewhere like the US.
Ah speciesism again…
From the article, the crime is not that they are selling cat meat, but that they’re mislabelling it as pork and beef
And doing so for profit…
I read the title as “saving cats from being slaughtered and sold as […] meat”… When will police start heroically saving the millions of pigs or cows from being sold as whatever meat?
cats and dogs matter, but cows, chickens, lambs, sheep, pigs etc don’t matter. Yep. Makes sense :/
They all have the same capacity to suffer. So why look after some animals but not others?
From a pure practical standpoint, it doesn’t make sense to eat carnivores. Terrible feed conversion. We don’t want to raise meat to feed it to meat. Traditionally, ruminants were a way of converting inedible grass into nutritious meat and dairy.
Also, carnivores are a lot harder to handle… They bite! Cats jump and dogs dig. I farm. The livestock stay inside the fence, cats and dogs go where they please.
The animals in your first list are carnivores (cats are an obligate carnivore) while the second list are herbivores or omnivores that do well on a vegetarian diet. That’s why we eat the second list and not the first.
Also humans like dogs, they’re a lot like us despite being a smelly 4-legged bitey critter. It’s quite odd, really. We’ve evolved together for millennia at this point. More so than any other species on earth, dogs have a place in our society alongside humans, with their own jobs and skill sets.
I lived in a few places in China for a year. This is either new, or completely fake. If cats and dogs were sold/eaten for food they would be in the market next to the turtles, above the fish tanks, and under the pigeons. Not a joke.
My bullshit detector is going off hard over this article, and I’m a vegetarian. With those disclaimers out of the way, if you think the suffering of a cat and cow are equal, and accept that some people are going to eat meat, you get a hell of a lot more meat out of a cow than a cat.
But cat is cheaper. It grows for free in the city.
The cow is perfect if you’re running a farm.
A cat is perfect if you’re trying to save some money on meat and you don’t have to raise it, just catch it
Indian city cows grow for free too
Eating someones pet is different than eating an animal being raised to be eaten. For starters you have to kidnap the pet.
how is it different? They all have the same capacity to suffer. They’re all living, breathing beings. They all experience pain and suffering. How’s it different?
In this case we’re talking literal stolen pets though.
They all have the same capacity to suffer.
why should that matter?
Because appealing to and manipulating your emotions is the only way that fella can alter your behavior in the way they see fit.
They don’t approve of your autonomy.
Spoken like a sociopath.
what about the autonomy of the animals we keep locked up on farms?
Well I just talked with a farm chicken and they seemed okay with it. Have you bothered to ask these animals how they feel about it or are you just projecting your own values onto them?
The animal kidnapping. It directly hurts the owner. A farmer doesn’t really get sad when the lambs go to slaughter.
Right ? I should be allowed to abuse and manipule people freely if I label them as “Slave” !
comparing slaves to animals is what slavers do.
Okay. That’s just a really bad argument. Stealling someones cat and killing the cat is bad. You directly hurt the owner and the animal.
God you guys are insufferable.
So what is the police going to do with the cats now?
Reminds me of this song I heard back in the 90s
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I’m vegan btw
