578
producer in 1990, and the Chinese authorities have long looked to the industrialized
West as the object of emulation in meat production. While Westerners greet each
other by asking ‘how are you,’ Chinese people traditionally greeted each other by
saying ‘Have you eaten?’”
21
And as Dr. Li explained, this may culturally relate to
the legacy amplified during the ascendancy of Mao. Said Dr. Li, “Many Chinese
mainlanders (I am using this word to distinguish Chinese on the mainland from
those in Taiwan and Hong Kong) are, in my opinion, possibly indifferent or insensitive to animal suffering (to varying degrees). But let me also state for the record that,
again in my opinion, they themselves are not to blame. Neither is Chinese traditional culture to blame. People become indifferent or insensitive perhaps because
they have been socialized to be so, particularly under Mao, when sympathy for the
downtrodden, love of pets, wearing make-up, and displaying individual taste in
fashion were all condemned as bourgeois and rebellious.”
22
We posed to Dr. Li, “So across China, at the local level, it’s a political quagmire
guaranteed to perpetuate animal suffering?” His answer was politically complicated, but, in our view, implied a version of business as usual all too familiar in the
West (Fig. 60.6).
That Western experience of cruelty, both inside and outside of pandemics, has
been well illustrated by Frank M. Snowden in his book Epidemics and Society:
From the Black Death to the Present.
23
And in his descriptions of western dietary
changes from the time of the Middle Ages, geographer Yi-Fu Tuan effectively narrates the grim excesses of our recent ancestors, including “the filth in the kitchen”
that no doubt escaped into the piles of flesh consumed by “Plantagenet kings” or
those with means whose dinner might easily contain within three courses, dozens
of items “heaped high on large platters” such as “shields of boiled and pickled boar,
hulled wheat boiled in milk and venison, oily stews, salted hart, pheasant, swan,
capons, lampreys, perch, rabbit, mutton, baked custard and tart fruit.” That was just
the first course. The “second course” replicated the first. And then there was yet
another course, and so on.
24
Such run-away carnivory in feudal societies, say earlyfifteenth- century France, when the population was approximately 11 million, 2
million in England, would have taken heavy tolls indeed, on the biodiversity as well
as on the consumers whose life expectancies were, among the nobility, between 48
21 See https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltobias/2012/11/02/animal-rights-in-china/#4f70dd
b17d57; See also, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9605048/China-noweats-twice-as-much-meat-as-the-United-States.html, Accessed April 1, 2020.
22 op.cit., “Animal Rights In China,” M.C.Tobias and J. G. Morrison, Forbes, https://www.forbes.
com/sites/michaeltobias/2012/11/02/animal-rights-in-china/#4f70ddb17d57, Accessed April 1,
2020.
23 Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2019. See also the interview in The New Yorker
between Snowden and Isaac Chotiner, “How Pandemics Change History,” March 3, 2020. https://
www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-pandemics-change-history, Accessed April 5, 2020.
24 Passing Strange and Wonderful – Aesthetics, Nature, And Culture, by Yi-Fu Tuan, Island Press/
Shearwater Books, Washington, D. C.,Covelo CA, 1993, pp. 47–51.
60 Human Cruelty and SARS-CoV-2
producer in 1990, and the Chinese authorities have long looked to the industrialized
West as the object of emulation in meat production. While Westerners greet each
other by asking ‘how are you,’ Chinese people traditionally greeted each other by
saying ‘Have you eaten?’”
21
And as Dr. Li explained, this may culturally relate to
the legacy amplified during the ascendancy of Mao. Said Dr. Li, “Many Chinese
mainlanders (I am using this word to distinguish Chinese on the mainland from
those in Taiwan and Hong Kong) are, in my opinion, possibly indifferent or insensitive to animal suffering (to varying degrees). But let me also state for the record that,
again in my opinion, they themselves are not to blame. Neither is Chinese traditional culture to blame. People become indifferent or insensitive perhaps because
they have been socialized to be so, particularly under Mao, when sympathy for the
downtrodden, love of pets, wearing make-up, and displaying individual taste in
fashion were all condemned as bourgeois and rebellious.”
22
We posed to Dr. Li, “So across China, at the local level, it’s a political quagmire
guaranteed to perpetuate animal suffering?” His answer was politically complicated, but, in our view, implied a version of business as usual all too familiar in the
West (Fig. 60.6).
That Western experience of cruelty, both inside and outside of pandemics, has
been well illustrated by Frank M. Snowden in his book Epidemics and Society:
From the Black Death to the Present.
23
And in his descriptions of western dietary
changes from the time of the Middle Ages, geographer Yi-Fu Tuan effectively narrates the grim excesses of our recent ancestors, including “the filth in the kitchen”
that no doubt escaped into the piles of flesh consumed by “Plantagenet kings” or
those with means whose dinner might easily contain within three courses, dozens
of items “heaped high on large platters” such as “shields of boiled and pickled boar,
hulled wheat boiled in milk and venison, oily stews, salted hart, pheasant, swan,
capons, lampreys, perch, rabbit, mutton, baked custard and tart fruit.” That was just
the first course. The “second course” replicated the first. And then there was yet
another course, and so on.
24
Such run-away carnivory in feudal societies, say earlyfifteenth- century France, when the population was approximately 11 million, 2
million in England, would have taken heavy tolls indeed, on the biodiversity as well
as on the consumers whose life expectancies were, among the nobility, between 48
21 See https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltobias/2012/11/02/animal-rights-in-china/#4f70dd
b17d57; See also, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9605048/China-noweats-twice-as-much-meat-as-the-United-States.html, Accessed April 1, 2020.
22 op.cit., “Animal Rights In China,” M.C.Tobias and J. G. Morrison, Forbes, https://www.forbes.
com/sites/michaeltobias/2012/11/02/animal-rights-in-china/#4f70ddb17d57, Accessed April 1,
2020.
23 Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2019. See also the interview in The New Yorker
between Snowden and Isaac Chotiner, “How Pandemics Change History,” March 3, 2020. https://
www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-pandemics-change-history, Accessed April 5, 2020.
24 Passing Strange and Wonderful – Aesthetics, Nature, And Culture, by Yi-Fu Tuan, Island Press/
Shearwater Books, Washington, D. C.,Covelo CA, 1993, pp. 47–51.
60 Human Cruelty and SARS-CoV-2