Dear all, thanks for interesting comments earlier on dogs and pets in China. I sympathize with Claire Huot’s comments as well. But I still think dogs raised for food can be perfectly OK. I’ve been invited, in China, to share dogs that were raised locally and respectfully, and then eaten, and I can’t see why one should not eat them, any less than any other human-raised animal, whether duck or pig or cattle or chicken (if one is to eat any of them at all … and, needless to say, without abusing any of them).
I have contributed a chapter on human-animal relations in China, to a book on China and its neighbors, _The Art of Neighbouring_, which is now already listed — though it may be a few weeks before it can be bought). My chapter is mostly about neighborly relations to wild animals, in contrast to domestic and pet animals in human charge/care:
Fiskesjö, Magnus. “China’s Animal Neighbours.” In Martin Saxer and Zhang Juan, eds. The Art of Neighbouring: Making Relations Across China’s Borders. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press (2016). ISBN: 9789462982581.
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/A/bo25088801.html
http://en.aup.nl/books/9789462982581-the-art-of-neighbouring.html
–Sincerely
Magnus Fiskesjö <nf42@cornell.edu>