Reptile Forum, Reptile Classifieds - CaptiveBred

[Drymarchon32]

Hi,
not sure if this is the right part of the forum to be posting this, but I just watched the BBC 6 O'clock news about Tesco in China.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6300993.stm

There is a "watch report" link on the page

They had footage of live Soft Shell Turtles being sold for soup in their shops!
I can't believe that they are doing this and I hope it has serious repercussions for their business back in the UK, if they were selling Dogs in Vietnam or Monkeys then I'm sure there would be immediate outcry.
Anyone else think that this is not to be tolerated? Even though Tesco are everywhere, they have never made it to Jersey so I have no way of protesting this point but I hope others will in the UK. I will be making further inquiries tomorrow. According to IUCN red list the species is currently listed as Vulnerable due to exploitation.
I know this species is sometimes farmed but seriously is this the kind of behaviour we expect from a British company?

Please let me know your thoughts

Al
_________________
Complacency killed the keeper

[955i]

It's almost as if they were selling cut up pieces of cow, sheep and pig in the U.K.

Disgusting

[Just A Beginner]

955i - Frankly thats a ridiculous comment. How often do you see live animals being sold for home slaughter? Well, actually the Chinese obsession with freshness often leads to carving the meat from the turtles live. Not really any 'slaughtering' involved.

It has nothing to do with hipocracy on eating meat and not thinking about where it comes from, or favouring the fates of some animals over conventional food animals. Its unnecesary, cruel, unregulated suffering advocated by a commercial shop chain which developed and amassed a fortune over here, only to capitalize on a lack of animal cruelty laws elsewhere in the world. So far tesco has refused to stop selling live vertebrates over there despite outrage over here, on the grounds of 'tradition' and 'cultural differences' (i.e. its bringing in a profit).

+ for the record I'm not a veggie or squeamish with my food. I filleted a pheasant for my tea today. Damn tasty it was too, having not been crammed in concentration camp style enclosure, pumped full of hormones, had its beak clipped off to render it defenseless, fed on a diet of pelleted god-knows-what-if-anything, bred to put on weight far too quickly for its bones to cope with or waded around in its own sh*te for most of its short life before being hung upside down, dipped in electrically charged water to nock it out (doesn't get every bird though) and have its throat cut without being able to fight back.

It happens to alot of food-birds, just so they can be minced up into a paste and pressed into nuggets, breadcrumbed, packeted with a picturesque scene of rolling hillsides *cough*BernardMatthews*cough* and sold cheaply by the truckload to a nation that fancies themselves as animal lovers but wonders why its getting obese and malnourished on a diet of mass produced cheap meat.

If people spent just as much money but bought a smaller amount of quality meat instead of a mound of cheap cr*p, we'd stop turning into such an obese country plus it would do more traditional farms the world of good (so that those quait little farms that people love to go to and look at the animals could make some money). As for people who cant cope with the thought of eating an animal (the type who only eat it if its skinned, boned, homogenised and disguised)... don't eat meat!

Well that came out of the blue. Sorry for the rant everyone... The first paragraph seems to be directed at 955i, the second at everyone, and from there I launched a bit of a tirade against the nation.... I seem to have developed a bit of an 'issue'

At least it got it off my chest I suppose
_________________

http://www.geocities.com/crayon_conservationist/

[Scott W]

[Scott W]

[H.S.]

[955i]

OK you got me, point not made very well

I was not trying to belittle the suffering of the turtles.

However, I do think that this is a knee jerk post as we are all into our reptiles and we see this as an outrage.

But consider the way that our meat is brought to the table!!

If you can afford to buy local meat and add extra to your shopping budget then that is great, but I suspect most of us buy ours as part of our weekly shop and if we are being conscientious then we will try to pick a piece of chicken that does not have hock burns so we can hope that this means it's legs could actually support its body (grown too quickly for the legs to develop enough to hold it) and could turn around while it wallowed in it's own filth in the barn it was crammed into.

I agree that the idea of a turtle being sold live and the meat carved off while alive is at best distressing, but it is by no means the only way that animals are mistreated to provide our food.

My real question is would the initial post have been made had it been anything other than a reptile involved, and I suspect not otherwise the forum would be overflowing with this kind of thread.

[Scott W]

[sam]

I really dont gte tescos-one minute they wasting police time reporting people for taking perfectly legal photographs of deer they have legally shot with a legally owned firearm, the next minute they are selling human livefoods. Fair enough if you ahve a stance or something tesco, but please keep up some form of stability!
_________________
Interested in amphibians? Join us at Myamphibia for friendly banter, amazing pictures and great information. Make some amphibious friends today!

[Scott W]