Animal-rights group fights sale of live animals for food

From Correspondent Don Knapp

SAN FRANCISCO (CNN) -- San Francisco animal rights groups are up in arms over Chinatown food vendors who sell live animals to customers for cooking.

The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals wants San Francisco's Animal Control and Welfare Commission to stop food sales of certain live animals. The commission has delayed a vote until next month.

Chinese merchants say live animal sales are a Chinese cultural tradition. But the SPCA charges the practice is cruel, and says chickens, fish and turtles suffer unnecessarily in Chinatown markets.

Merchants defend the sales, saying they comply with food-handling laws. Shopkeeper Mitella Kung cited examples of the humane treatment her father's game birds and chickens receive.

"He spends more hours taking care, making sure they're comfortable, making sure they're healthy, because we don't want any birds to die, because that's a loss of money," she said.

Fisherman's Wharf

Arnold Chin, a leader in the Chinese community, said some people may misunderstand how some animals need to be cared for.

"Somebody would say this is an overcrowded cage," he said, indicating one with three chickens. "But because of the nature of the hen, if you have less than two or three or four in there, they will not share their body temperature and they will die," he said.

Chin maintains that animal activists are unfairly targeting Chinese vendors while ignoring other live-animal vendors. Fishermen, for example, sell live shellfish packed together in huge bins. And on San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, street vendors boil shellfish alive.

"There are other communities within San Francisco that have the same issues that are not being brought to light," Chin said.

But Richard Avanzino, a spokesman for the San Francisco SPCA chapter, disputed the claims. "I don't believe that any people in this nation are bound to a tradition that says animals have to be stacked on top of each other," he said.

"I think it's a market condition. I think it's an economic issue. I don't think it's a matter of race."

If the city won't act, Avanzino says he'll put his 78,000 members behind a ballot initiative to outlaw certain live animal sales.

Related site:

• San Francisco SPCA

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