Taste for exotica

The Chinese appetite for monkey brains, bear paws. bear bile, and shark’s fin is as much a lightening rod for indignation as the butchering of dolphins.

Xinhua yesterday quoted South China Morning Post as saying that there is a slaughterhouse in Zhejiang Province that processes around 600 whale sharks annually into non-essential life props such as lipsticks, face creams and health supplements.

A few years ago, on a trip to Yixing City, Jiangsu Province, I came across a slain pangolin (scaly anteater), skinned and coiled in a plastic basin, ready to be processed in an eatery near a famous scenic spot. There were rows upon rows of such family-run eateries. A conversation with the owner revealed that diners ate one pangolin on average per day. Pangolin is a protected species in China.

When outsiders accuse us of inflicting cruelty on animals, such as raising moon bears for bile, or harvesting sharks for their fins, we sometimes take up the weapon of culture and tradition to defend our gluttony.

But today, we are way past the stage of eating to live, and there is already a proven, effective substitute for traditional medicine such as bear bile. So nothing explains the killing and torturing better than the need to satisfy our taste for exotica.

Behind the exploitation, a euphemism for killing and enslavement, lie enormous profits. For instance, a dolphin considered smart enough to perform can sell for well over US$5,000.

When killing becomes an established trade, it will be a lot harder to attack it, let alone shake it up, by just wielding the moral baton.

Whenever some conservationists jab their fingers at Japanese for their whaling and dolphin hunt, or confront Chinese on consumption of dog meat, the accused will denounce their detractors as hypocrites, arguing that the only morally consistent option is to stop eating meat altogether.

Oftentimes, the conservationists would argue in their defense that some animals, such as dogs, have special connections to human beings, unlike farm animals raised commercially for human consumption. But this argument represents cruelty of another kind.

What perishes together with the dolphins, sharks and other creatures is our innocence and conscience. In subjecting other species to our bruality and excesses, we are becoming apathetic, and disrespectful to Mother Nature.

Since the existence of mankind is an act of cruelty per se ? we sustain our lives with the lives of others ? our false sense of superiority over òbarbarousó eaters often blinds us into convenient finger-pointing against others.

But in fact, there is a savage streak in every people and every culture, as evidenced by the ritualized killing across the world, such as Spanish bullfighting and the annual Canadian hunt for harp seals, when thousands of pups are bludgeoned to death for their pelts and fat. Whale hunts are also carried out by Norway and Iceland.