Consumers who patronise Chinese fast food restaurants are concerned they may have been deceived into eating dog meat, but not concerned enough to stop purchasing the food.
Following the spread of a viral video of a dog being skinned by a man who appeared to be Chinese at a location that appeared to be local, citizens raised concerns over what they described as a brutal act.
Yesterday, business was slow but steady at several Chinese restaurants in Central Trinidad, but customers still came in to purchase the food.
“I mean, it isn’t going to stop me from purchasing,” said Kwame Guada.
Guada said he didn’t eat Chinese food often and he was concerned about being deceived, but wouldn’t really let this deter him from purchasing the product.
“Let’s be honest. When you go to buy minced beef, you could be getting minced anything and you wouldn’t know.”
Ryjll Morris, a student from Chaguanas, said he purchased food from Chinese restaurants often.
“Everyone has heard that things like that happen but everyone still buys it,” Morris said.
“Does it worry me that I could be served something else without knowing? Yes. I’m not confident that I haven’t eaten dogs before, but I like Chinese food so I’m hoping not and I’m most likely still going to buy it.”
What should worry citizens is that while other meats sold to consumers go through checks and lab tests by public health inspectors, dogs, cats and rodents are not subjected to any such checks.
In fact, according to Public Health Inspector Neil Rampersad, from the Sangre Grande Health Inspector’s Office, dog meat is not permitted to be sold in this country.
“We would never approve dogs, cats or rodents for sale. Meat is generally inspected before it is sold to the public and we do random sampling at restaurants as well as lab tests. We ensure that the meat sold is fit for human consumption.”
Rampersad said, however, that the division was responsible only for meat sold to the public.
The possibility that the dog was slaughtered for the personal use of the man in the video was also raised by many citizens in comments across social media, since it is impossible to say what was done with the animal after it was skinned.
Rampersad said the video came as a surprise to him, as the local culture meant public health officers weren’t faced with the challenge of inspecting “dog meat.”
Yesterday, no one at the Chinese Association of T&T was available to comment on the story.
However, one restaurant owner in Chaguanas, a Chinese national, said she would never sell dog meat to her customers.
“Some people in China eat dogs but I never ate dogs and I do not sell it here.”
She said many other restaurant owners whom she knew would not sell it either.
Animal rights activist Nalini Dial says questions must be asked about whether the public was being deceived by owners of Chinese restaurants.
“Our culture is not to eat dogs or cats, but we have Chinese nationals coming into this country to work and eat and that is part of their culture,” Dial said.
“We do not want that kind of thing in our country. We have laws to deal with that.”
What the act says
The Summary Offences Act of 1988, which details laws relating to cruelty to animals, imposes fines for a number of reasons relating to the mistreatment of animals.
Section 64 of the act imposes a fine of $200 on any person who commits an offence or imprisonment for one month, for “any person who slaughters [wantonly] any animal, except such as may have met with accident, or which, for public safety or other reasonable cause, ought to be killed on the spot.”
Section 79 of the act states that any person who “cruelly beats, ill-treats, starves, over-drives, overrides, overloads, abuses, tortures, or otherwise maltreats any animal is liable to a fine of four hundred dollars or to imprisonment for two months.”