AR-News: (Japan) Treatment of animals reflects human society

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

Commenting on the escalating avian flu scare in Kyoto Prefecture, the 
prefectural governor blurted out, ``We may be in for the worst consequence.'' I 
imagine he was only speaking his mind, but I don't think ``worst consequence'' was 
an appropriate comment under the circumstances. With the bird flu problem 
still unfolding, surely the governor should be doing everything in his power to 
prevent the situation from spinning out of control. 
For several years, familiar animals-cattle, carp and chickens-have been 
contracting grave diseases or dying in great numbers. The unexpectedly high toll is 
also a reminder of the sheer number of animals we consume each day for food. 
At a library, I went to the shelves labeled ``Domestic Animals.'' The titles 
of several hundred books there bore testimony to the closeness of human-animal 
relations. 
Here are some of the titles I came across: ``Tabemono to shiteno Dobutsu 
tachi'' (Animals as food); ``Ushi to Nihonjin'' (Cattle and Japanese); ``Nihon 
Meigyu Hyakusen'' (100 best cattle breeds in Japan); ``Niwatori no Fukken'' 
(Reinstatement of chickens); ``Niwatori to Hito'' (Chickens and humans); ``Hokkaido 
Yokei Hyakunen-shi'' (100-year history of chicken farming in Hokkaido); 
``Buta: Kono Yuyo na Dobutsu'' (Pig, the useful animal); and ``Ton-ko'' (Discourse 
on hogs). 
I felt like joining my hands in prayer to thank those creatures for their 
services to the human race. 







full story:

http://www.asahi.com/english/vox/TKY200403060139.html 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.envirolink.org/pipermail/ar-news/attachments/20040305/a3bb9a21/attachment.html