Media Some weird stuff we eat...

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MadMel

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[video=youtube;zFelfDbkzm4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFelfDbkzm4&feature=feedrec_grec_index_more[/video]

Squirming snakes and deep fried LIVE fish anyone?
 
The still-twitching snake meat I can deal with, though I can't imagine it tastes very good raw.

But scaling, butchering, and frying a fish alive is pointless and vicious.
 
mehh, some cultural foods are weird.

I could stomach it but I wouldn't ask for it.
certainly wouldn't bother wanting to learn to make it.
 
Sigh. This is the part of my heritage that I feel most disturbed about. Chinese by birth, but living apart from them so I can't begin to descibe how distanced I feel from some of these "cultural" foods.

Essentially I believe the core theory is that there is an insistence on freshness as freshness is a depiction of quality. There are lots of genuine food quality issues, scams and fraudsters in China, so i think they consider live foods a mark of the highest quality.

In fact it is common practice in seafood restaurants for them to bring the fish to your table in a styrofoam box to show you that it is alive and jumping prior to them cooking it.

I completely don't agree with the way these things are done. I have heard about this dish many times (the fish, not the snake), but never saw it. Now that I've seen it, I wish I never did. The snake was killed by decapitation, so fine.

But I don't see the point of descaling and removing the guts of a fish while it is still alive in a way that tries to prolong its life. That is just unnecessary cruelty.

Other dishes that are cruel in china:
1) Eating horse/mule meat carved from the horse that is walked to your tableside. You select the meat portion you want, they scald the horse in the area with boiling water from a large pan, then slice off the chunk of meat onto a plate for you. It is cooked directly at the table, or eaten blanched. The horse is then taken to the stable to 'rest'. Might be served a few times in a night, then is allowed to heal and recover from the wounds, then is served again once the meat grows back. (Heard this from a few chinese students in Australia who were reminiscing about the foods that they missed. They found it funny that the horse would go through this again and again. I felt so sad for them)

2) Everyone has heard of the monkey brains story, where live monkeys have their cranial lobes chiseled out as they are confined to a table with a hole cut out only large enough for their head to be held in place, the rest of the monkey is below the table. People then scoop out the still warm brains with spoons while the monkey blinks and screams and thrashes. (Multiple recountings, 2 claimed eye witness accounts, not verified. But everyone has heard of this practice)

3) Tenderized venison: a deer is placed in a small pen, and staff standing around cane/whip it continuously, so that it panics and runs circles around the pen. They keep it up till the deer collapses from exhaustion, then butcher it immediately and cook it. Diners are allowed to watch to verify the process if they wish. The whipping is supposed to increase blood flow to the muscles and tenderize the meat and improve the flavour of the animal.

Never ate any of these things. Never will. Disgusting practices.
 
I'm southern Chinese, and there is a premium placed on freshness - but not to the point of cruelty like this. Fish still live in the tank when you order is good. Fish scaled and cooked alive is not. I don't know what area of China this contest took place in, but it is a disgusting practice and I find it shameful.

The only appeal that I can think of about these dishes - the ones in the video and the ones Tristan described - are either the gross-factor (so you can brag that you eat this way) and the power factor (I can do whatever I want to anything I want).

This isn't cooking. This isn't seeking the ultimate in freshness. This is barbarism only barely masquerading as adventurism and culinary art.
 
There are lots of things to be judgemental about. As long as we eat animals there will be Some cruelty. Just to what level. I used to think hunting was cruel. I realise now it might be the best way of getting food. The animal suffers very little and has a good run of it in the natural environment before a predator takes it out. Hunting for food is fine. For the same reason I prefer organic farmers and free range whatever... improve the quality of life. At the end though, we just are trying assuage guilt from food or make moral choices.

I DO think the snake in the video is ok eaten that way. I mean, beheading means it is dead right? Fairly straightforward butchering. The gross part is eating it while it is still squirming in its death throes. Same for squid/octopus. It'll squirm long after you dispatch the animal. Frogs too, if you are skillful at butchering. You can get them on the plate raw and twitching.

I wish things were just butchered quickly to reduce suffering. Also wish that commercial farming was less cruel in terms of the way animals are reared. But we all make our individual choices, and a few billion choices then add up to shape the world we live in.
 
True, the snake is alright - it died quickly. But the fish really didn't need die in a prolonged, painful fashion.

Commercial rearing and processing of livestock does have its issues as well. There's no getting around the fact that we're eating other animals, but there are better ways to raise and kill them than others.
 
Yeah I do agree that it is pretty sick.. And Tristan, I can verify the third account about the venison, but my experience was with a dog. You practically walk in, go around to the back which has a huge compound housing dogs. You choose the dog you wanna eat, they bring it out, tie it to a tree by it's back legs and pummel it to death with a baseball bat. Suppose to tenderise the meat... I walked out once they tied the dog to the tree. And it was in Vietnam. I do think that we as Asians have some kind of a sadistic side to us when it comes to food. And its not only the Chinese that are doing it. The Japs do the same thing as well... I feel that eating is one thing but the process of rearing and butchering is also as important as well.
 
There has been some mention of the issues with commercial farming. Yea, the video was (pretty damn) gross, but perhaps we shouldn't be so ready to point moral fingers when we (knowingly or unknowingly) enjoy meat raised and killed the way that it is in our commercial farms.
 
There has been some mention of the issues with commercial farming. Yea, the video was (pretty damn) gross, but perhaps we shouldn't be so ready to point moral fingers when we (knowingly or unknowingly) enjoy meat raised and killed the way that it is in our commercial farms.

amen to that!
 
[video=youtube;zFelfDbkzm4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFelfDbkzm4&feature=feedrec_grec_index_more[/video]

Squirming snakes and deep fried LIVE fish anyone?
I saw calf heads in half and scoop out their brains for a living.... but I couldnt watch them scale a live fish, that's ****ed.
 
How many of you actually have experience in butchering live animals?

Or you really think its ethical and humane as long as you buy it off supermarket in a nice display package?
 
I have butchered live poultry before. And I butcher live fish quite often.
 
How many of you actually have experience in butchering live animals?

Or you really think its ethical and humane as long as you buy it off supermarket in a nice display package?

I've butchered my fair share of fish and never scaled it while still alive, nor dunked it in boiling oil while still alive. That crosses an ethical line in my book. Everyone has lines, to each their own....but that's where mine is.

What's done in this video to the fish is not humane in any way shape or form. If you want to eat a snake while it's muscles are still contracting after you've killed it, or the same for any animal...fine, not my cup of tea but I don't have a problem with it.
 
I've butchered my fair share of fish and never scaled it while still alive, nor dunked it in boiling oil while still alive. That crosses an ethical line in my book. Everyone has lines, to each their own....but that's where mine is.

What's done in this video to the fish is not humane in any way shape or form. If you want to eat a snake while it's muscles are still contracting after you've killed it, or the same for any animal...fine, not my cup of tea but I don't have a problem with it.

Don't want to turn this thread into a special olympic of 'barbaric' but generally accepted cooking techniques within each culture, but the clip is far from the worse in culinary arts.

I do agree though, that eating things alive is pretty cruel at todays standards. But I have seen much worse in butchering and the cooking process.
 
Yeah I do agree that it is pretty sick.. And Tristan, I can verify the third account about the venison, but my experience was with a dog. You practically walk in, go around to the back which has a huge compound housing dogs. You choose the dog you wanna eat, they bring it out, tie it to a tree by it's back legs and pummel it to death with a baseball bat. Suppose to tenderise the meat... I walked out once they tied the dog to the tree. And it was in Vietnam. I do think that we as Asians have some kind of a sadistic side to us when it comes to food. And its not only the Chinese that are doing it. The Japs do the same thing as well... I feel that eating is one thing but the process of rearing and butchering is also as important as well.

Well, I haven't heard of Japanese doing anything like this for a long, long time.

I see that you refer to Japanese people as "Japs". May I call you "Chink"?
 
Well, I haven't heard of Japanese doing anything like this for a long, long time.

I see that you refer to Japanese people as "Japs". May I call you "Chink"?

Ya, eating dog meat isn't part of Japanese culture. It's more Korean. Thai don't eat dog meat. As to Chinese, they eat everything, moving or not. Everyone will learn to eat anything during famine.

And don't get worked up so much on what people call Japanese. Last that I know, most Asian countries still have strong resentment in Japanese war crimes (that were never acknowledged by post war JP governments).
 
And don't get worked up so much on what people call Japanese. Last that I know, most Asian countries still have strong resentment in Japanese war crimes (that were never acknowledged by post war JP governments).
C'mon guys, this kind of stuff really does not belong on this forum. The atmosphere here is very friendly, and this exchange is not very welcome.
 
true. sorry about that. can't find the 'edit' button.
 
There's an old saying to the effect that the Chinese will eat anything with legs except a table and anything that flies except an airplane.

Sorry, not exactly P.C.

James
 
Hey sorry bout the "***" thing. I didn't know that it would offend.
And I did not say that the Japanese eat dogs.. There are vids of them eating sashimi from a live fish and all.. And maybe you could take a look at the video that was posted not so long ago?

O and by the way, most of the younger generation have already forgave and forgot about the war..
 
Some fish are really hard to kill so I can believe that they can survive being scaled and gutted. One such example is the wirrah (or brown rock cod) generally considered a trash/pest fish by Anglo-Australians but enjoyed by some ethnic groups.

easternwirra.jpg


These ugly mofos just refuse to go quietly. Bashing it over the head doesn't work, 'spiking' didn't work - bastid just kept thrashing around in the sink and oozing great gobs of slime through its skin (they're renowned for this). It finally went down after I cut its head off. The whole experience was quite unsettling.

They're easy to catch but disgusting to eat (another is nickname is 'boot'). Tough like a tyre and the skin goes like leather. Ugh.
 
I see that you refer to Japanese people as "Japs". May I call you "Chink"?

Settle down, Rambo. If you think it was rude, say so. There is no need to be a jerk about it and throw down like that. I'm sure that Mel did not mean to be offensive.
 
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