The Monday news wrap: More killings in China … and don’t drink the water
By Gina Spadafori
March 10, 2008
You couldn’t get me to go to the Olympics if you gave me a private jet to get there and presidential box to watch from. (And no, TV execs, I won’t be watching on TV, either. I’m boycotting.) On top of everything else (EE=the product tampering, the poison, the pollution and the political leadership) Chinese officials are now slaughtering cats by the thousands to clean up Beijing for the games. From the Daily Mail (UK):
Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.
Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.
Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city.
The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.
And yes, this is the same government that clubbed dogs to death, all to present a pretty face for the Olympics:
But the crackdown on cats is seen by animal campaigners as just one of a number of extreme measures being taken by communist leaders to ensure that its capital appears clean, green and welcoming during the Olympics.
Polluting factories in and around the city are being ordered to shut down or relocate during the Games to ease Beijing’s choking smog and drivers are allowed out on to the roads only three times a week.
Fares on the city’s underground network have been cut to just two yuan (14p) for any journey – a six-fold reduction on some routes – to keep people off buses, and beggars and street sleepers are being moved to out-of-town camps or given train fares back to their home provinces.
[...]
The cull of Beijing’s estimated 500,000 cat population is certain to provoke international outrage as it comes just over a year after the Chinese were criticised for rounding up and killing stray dogs across the country.
Is it any surprise that the deadly faking of pet-food ingredients has been going on for years? Until the Chinese companies got a little too ambitious/greedy and went so far as to kill thousands of pets in the United States and Canada last year, everything was hunky-dory in China’s Wild West economy.
***
Just when I have weaned myself nearly entirely from bottled water (the bottles are causing a huge waste problem, plus using fuel to fill and transport), the AP reports:
A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows.
To be sure, the concentrations of these pharmaceuticals are tiny, measured in quantities of parts per billion or trillion, far below the levels of a medical dose. Also, utilities insist their water is safe.
But the presence of so many prescription drugs — and over-the-counter medicines like acetaminophen and ibuprofen — in so much of our drinking water is heightening worries among scientists of long-term consequences to human health.
And animal health as well:
Veterinary drugs also play a role. Pets are now treated for a wide range of ailments — sometimes with the same drugs as humans. The inflation-adjusted value of veterinary drugs rose by 8 percent, to $5.2 billion, over the past five years, according to an analysis of data from the Animal Health Institute.
Um, AP? It’s not just pets. Think livestock. This news is yet another reason to reform the practice of factory farming, because drugs are used to keep animals “healthy” in jam-packed conditions. And thanks to regular reader Pat for pointing out the patronizing official response in this story:
Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public “doesn’t know how to interpret the information” and might be unduly alarmed.
Yeah, because we’re sooooo stupid. Nothing to see here folks, move along.
Give that official a ticket to the Olympics. Buh-bye.
And finally: Hartz is again recalling some of its cat vitamins. Salmonella. Details here.
Ugh. Also read the other day that India is giving strychnine to homeless dogs in order to combat the terrible Rabies problem there. : (
Comment by slt — March 10, 2008 @ 8:35 am
Have you any idea how important the recall news I find here is?
Because when the one vet who is convinced that I’m killing my critters by feeding them raw opens his mouth, I can stop that rant in mid-air with CAT VITAMINS — as good as aflatoxin and “melamime.” Or whatever the news is on any given week.
I’m annoyed that after all these years of disgustingly healthy animals, I still have to do this.
The one time he insisted that my old dog had gotten sick from meat — the next day the newspaper ran the story about the sewerage overflow into the recreational lake where she’d been swimming, closing of the beaches, and coliform bacteria levels that were befitting a hog-farm lagoon. Yeah. Musta been the venison.
Keep it up.
Comment by H. Houlahan — March 10, 2008 @ 8:48 am
There’s an article in the March 1 edition of The Economist about animal cruelty in China… for example, keeping bears in tiny cages and tapping them for bile… I guess there’s some hocus pocus ‘medicine’ they get out of it… I’m with you… boycotting olympics and anything else I can identify as imported from China. They’ve got some sick and twisted savagery I can live without.
Comment by CynthiaW — March 10, 2008 @ 12:09 pm
While I don’t disagree re: the practise, I would have to suggest that, um, we can’t easily call the kettle black.
Animal cruelty isn’t a “Chinese” issue and more or less than it is an American issue. For bear bile try Foie Gras farming, veal crating etc (or for Candians, seal clubbing, for Aussies mulesing), or even the sawing of of live antler to make a product we often ship back to China? I truly think the real issue gets colored by ‘we have issues, they have barbarity’ rhetoric where ‘savagery’ is colored by the idea of the foreigner as a literal savage versus one’s own civilisation with flaws.
If such an issue was turned on America by, for example, Europe (as it often is re: dog cosmetic mutilations, sow crates etc etc etc) do we accept the mutual guilt as being immediately connected to what it is to be a modern American sick and twisted savage?
Comment by emily — March 10, 2008 @ 12:45 pm
For anyone that wants to help, Mike Floyd with DefendOurPets.org has created an anniversary flier regarding the pet food recall and its accessible at his site at http://www.DefendOurPets.org. We are hoping that you all can go to his site, print as many off as you can and post them at tons of places in your cities and towns. It would be great to get as many out there this week before 3-16 as possible. I plan on posting them at grocery stores, our State Office bulletin boards, our Federal Building and also send them out when I send bill payments. Mike has been swamped but this is his statement:
Hi All,
With the anniversary of the recall just around the corner, we are
taking stock of what we’ve been able to achieve, and the tremendous amount of work
that remains to be done.
With this in mind, we’ve created an “Anniversary Flier” that we hope
everyone will post in their community in places where it will get the most exposure.
It’s only by this constant prodding can we keep our cause in the public eye, and
make sure that we can accomplish some meaningful change.
You can access the flier via our homepage at http://www.defendourpets.org
Thanks again,
Mike
Comment by Sandi K — March 10, 2008 @ 1:58 pm
Thank-you, Emily. There’s bad in all of us.
Comment by Cathy Z. — March 10, 2008 @ 2:05 pm
The cat murder makes me cry.
With the profit from the Olympics they could have bought vaccines for very little.
Horrible, Horrible Horrible!
Comment by rose-aka the Drew fan club — March 10, 2008 @ 2:07 pm
Beijing for the Olympics = Potemkin village
I’ve gone through Beijing on the way to Ulaanbaatar twice now. Going to Mongolia again in Sept. Will come back through Beijing and the huge new terminal and will be interested to see any differences on the route between the airport and hotel (one night layover) from the last trip in 2006 and this next one. The air pollution has always been truly awful.
I’m disgusted at the round-ups of dogs and cats and am honestly at a loss to understand why many people are so enchanted with China. I know that the people are not the government (sound familiar?), but between the “faulty” products, treatment of animals and what has happened to Tibet, I’ll keep just going on through, as needed, to Mongolia, thank you very much. Animals are looked at in a utilitarian way there, but the country people don’t live an easy life, either.
Comment by Susan Fox — March 10, 2008 @ 7:47 pm
Olympics in China?
Not interested, won’t watch them, and wouldn’t go if they paid me a million dollars.
That place is bad news.
They don’t care about human beings…must less animals. They have such big numbers of both, I guess they feel that they are “expendable commodities?”
Anyway, they can keep their Olympic games. The sponsors will be wasting their money advertising this one, as far as I’m concerned. Might be nice to know who the sponsors are, so we could boycott them too!
Comment by Marcy — March 10, 2008 @ 9:46 pm
FYI: Here are some sponsors: UPS, Bank of America, General Electric, Volkswagen and MacDonald’s. Also Johnson & Johnson, Coca-Cola, Panasonic, Samsung and Kodak.
I can’t imagine taking top notch competition horses to China and making them breathe that air. The world’s record marathon runner, Haile Gebrselassie of Ehtiopia, has pulled out of the marathon event, citing Beijing’s pollution as the reason. Here’s the article from today’s NYT. http://tinyurl.com/yon5v3
Comment by deb — March 11, 2008 @ 4:33 am
Sadly, he’s still planning to compete in other events. He’s not boycotting the Olympics, but rather, taking care of his own health (important, of course - but not nearly the “statement” impact a boycott would have).
Comment by The OTHER Pat — March 11, 2008 @ 5:55 am
There was an article in the New York Times about how the Olympics Committee over here is bringing 25,000 lbs of protein (food) to the Olympics because they don’t trust eating the Chinese food.
Boycott boycott boycott. Tell sponsors why you are not buying their products. Why should we support the cruel Chinese government?
Comment by perkysmom — March 11, 2008 @ 7:58 am
I read with interest about the medication levels showing up in municipal water, but none of the articles I saw offered any way to treat/filter that water at home - has anyone seen any info? I’d be curious to see if the average Brita pitcher/boiling has any effect at all.
Comment by John — March 11, 2008 @ 11:17 am
Don’t know how many people would boycott the sponsors…it would take a good number to be noticed and felt by the businesses.
We could let them know of our dissatisfaction with their sponsorship of the “Cruel China” Olympics anway. Just write them a letter and say so.
China is cruel to both humans and animals. I don’t know how anyone, in good conscience, could support anything connected with them.
Comment by Marcy — March 11, 2008 @ 8:53 pm
I think that only distillation or RO (Reverse Osmosis) would have any reasonable shot at getting the drugs out of the water.
Comment by The OTHER Pat — March 11, 2008 @ 9:39 pm
An article on how buying it bottled is no insurance against drugs in your water:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH.....index.html
This passage:
“‘The industry is monitoring it,’ said Bob Hirst, a vice president at the International Bottled Water Association, which represents dozens of brands. ‘But we haven’t seen anything to alarm us at this point’.”
is somehow less than reassuring when compared to the following passage from the article posted above:
“Water providers rarely disclose results of pharmaceutical screenings, unless pressed, the AP found. For example, the head of a group representing major California suppliers said the public ‘doesn’t know how to interpret the information” and might be unduly alarmed’.”
Comment by The OTHER Pat — March 12, 2008 @ 6:02 am
I wrote a letter to my local newspaper because the groundwater might contain uranium leakage once the Canadian company Powertech starts drilling. Unless, of course, the state stops them. They will be drilling for uranium because they own the mineral rights.
Unfortunately I wrote a letter yesterday which the paper published in the opinion section about the right of privacy law, so I guess the very important issue of our water might have to wait. Pets will more more affected than adults by contaminated water because they are smaller.
Comment by Colorado Transplant — March 12, 2008 @ 7:08 am
I am Boycotting the Olympics. A lot of people i know are.
Over on Itchmo We have in the forums a lot of address’ to send letters about this terrible abuse of the animals.
It’s under- Cruelty and animal abuse.
It has a whole lot of people and We have been writing letters like crazy. Please write and let China know how you feel.
Comment by Trudy Jackson — March 12, 2008 @ 11:53 am
I heard on local news that none of the filtration systems currently installed on home plumbing or the water pitcher filters take out drugs in the water. The public water suppliers and the other filtration systems have not been designed to filter out any kind of drugs. I believe over time any person or animals drinking drug-contaminated water are affected by these drugs.
Comment by cheriecat — March 12, 2008 @ 6:18 pm
On a bit of a lighter note - yet ANOTHER reason to boycott the Olympics in China!
http://ap.google.com/article/A.....gD8VGF6HG0
Comment by The OTHER Pat — March 19, 2008 @ 6:06 am