its all down to personal preference but at the end of the day i think eating elephant and monkey etc is irresponsible if nothing else.
promoting the slaughter and consumption of anything endangered is ridiculous.

i think we're all perfectly well aware that there are countries/people who think it normal to eat cats and dogs. solution = dont watch the programs and dont visit the countries!

i think we're all perfectly well aware that there are countries/people who think it normal to eat cats and dogs. solution = dont watch the programs and dont visit the countries!

I watched it last night, not a good programme, but an interesting issue.

I have eaten some unusual things, one of my relatives in South Africa works on a game reserve as a professional hunter. It's his job to keep numbers down and to kill old or injured animals in the reserve. The few predators they have cannot keep up on the numbers particularly of the bigger game and there aren't enough reserves willing to take their overflow game when the park gets dangerously full. So he brings home Zebra, Kudu, Springbok and occasionally even Elephant and yes I have eaten it all. The animals had a full and healthy wild life in a well managed reserve and were humanely killed as part of a management program, the alternative would be to burn the bodies of these animals which this reserve thinks is more of a waste, so allows the reserve workers to take the meat home and sells the skins on to raise money to pay for vet care, worker's wages and other reserve management costs.

Dog is something of a more difficult issue. Dog meat as with most carnivore meat is not a healthy meat to eat and as the eating of dogs is frowned on in most cultures, the only places where you might come across dog meat they will have been terribly and cruelly confined and inhumanely slaughtered, there is no way I would eat those dogs, nor condone anyone else eating them. If it were a matter of that or starvation then obviously the human comes first. But in all the cases I have seen in Vietnam and china, dog was considered an expensive delicacy and was nothing to do with poor folk just trying to get by and not starve. In china they sell the dyed dog skins as fake fur to the west. Be careful and check your coats. Dog fur that has been dyed to fake cheetah, leopard or tiger is still imported as 'fake fur' and has fond it's way on to many designer coats and bags!

I can't imagine a situation in this country where dog meat would ever be allowed to be sold, but I can't help but think of the hundreds of humanely killed healthy dogs being thrown away and cremated every week from pounds and RSPCA centres. Can you imagine the uproar if the centres started to make some money on the side selling their meat and fur back to china!

im kinda torn on this one anyway. im a firm believer of 'to each their own'... but cruelty to animals is unacceptable. thing is how much can we actually do about it? not a whole lot... which is why i took the attitude of... "if you dont like it, avoid it"

i would never eat cat or dog but its hardly my place to look down on other people for doing so. just as i wouldnt expect a vegetarian to look down on me for eating pork or beef.

the program is horrible though, its not nice to see what actually goes on.