There is a tweet on Twitter today which reminds me that in the huge dog meat market in Asia, mainly China, they believe that if they torture the dogs to death by beating them and in other horrible ways, they improve the taste of the “meat” that the dogs produce because of the adrenaline produced by the dog while they are being tortured. They believe, in short, that adrenaline improves the taste of the muscles of the dog after they’ve been killed. A barbaric thought but it is very noticeable that they kill the dogs in this way. Another reason why the practice is so terribly wrong.
Are the torturers correct? It’s a valid question because if they are wrong, the mass torture of dogs for the dog meat market has been entirely unnecessary. They might have slaughtered the animals humanely instead and obtained better tasting meat.
Not that I am in favour of the dog meat market in any sense because we should not be eating dogs and cats for the simple reason that they are domestic animals and meant to be our companions. That is the agreement.
Anyway, back to the point of this article. It took me no more than five minutes to discover scientific evidence which proves that stressed livestock produces meat which tastes worse because the muscle is of a higher pH. This totally undermines the Asian way of torturing dogs before eating them.
The Farm2Fork website states this about stressed animals tasting worse:
Animals raised in high-stress environments produce meat that is tough and tasteless. Happy animals, on the other hand, produce meat that is tender and tasty.
And the Atlas Obscura website states:
Adrenaline released by stress before slaughter uses up glycogen, which means there’s not enough lactic acid produced postmortem. This affects different kind of meat in different ways, but in general it’ll be tough, tasteless, and high in pH, and will go bad quicker than unstressed meat.
And a study titled: “Effect of stress during slaughter on carcass characteristics and meet quality in tropical beef cattle” (link) concluded that if people want the meat to taste better, they should look after livestock better to try and ensure that they are less stressed.
In short, they concluded that the handing of livestock should be designed to minimise stress to animals during the slaughter process to improve animal welfare AND MEAT QUALITY. The scientists said that stressful handling before slaughter causing bruising caused the meat to be dry (DFD meat).
The study summarised their findings thus:
The bruises probably caused by stress-inducing situations triggered DFD meat. Appropriate changes in handling routines in operating conditions should be made to minimize stress to animals during the slaughter process to improve animal welfare and meat quality.
To put it another way, if you want to kill an animal to eat it and you want to make the meat taste as good as possible, you should ensure that the animal is as calm as possible and as least stressed as possible. Notice that the study referred to bruising being linked to poor meat. This ties in with the beating of dogs to death at the Yulin Dog Meat Festival (not a festival).
Another source tells me that the pH of meat affects it water holding capacity which in turn affects it quality. Stress before slaughter affects the pH level.
This, as you can see, is COMPLETELY OPPOSITE to the beliefs of the Asian people who deliberately torture animals and kill them in a most barbaric way to, they believe, improve the taste of the meat i.e. the flesh of that animal after they’ve been killed.
This means that over perhaps about a thousand years of eating dog meat many millions of dogs have suffered terrible acts of torture against them for no reason at all. Actually, there is a reason for this: ignorance. Or perhaps the humans just enjoy torturing the animals.
Twitter comments – warning disturbing words
In one shocking video dog was filmed having a blowtorch used on its body while still alive before it was likely boiled to remove the rest of its fur.
Another one shows a greyhound being carried to a boiling cauldron by three men as a little boy watches. The dog howls in terror as it tries to free itself before two men hold it down and cover it with a lid until it dies.
The tweet (this may disappear one day)
disgusting, vile excuses for human beings, whatever the type of animal being so terribly abused and killed!!!
Yep, I feel the same way as you know. There is something terribly dark at the heart of Asians in Asia who kill dogs for their ‘meat’. They think Westerners are mad for being critical. We think they are horrendously cruel. Indians also beat dogs to death because they are ‘pests’.
https://animal-human-relationship.pictures-of-cats.org/kerala-leaders-beat-street-dogs-to-death-in-violation-of-the-law-and-their-religious-faith/
Desensitization is the major factor, but also a lack of compassion for animals, or, like most of the West, etc., an ignorant Speciesism regarding some animals as far more important the rest