China's Carnivorous Eating Habits Become Food for Debate

BEIJING — Sherry Xia wants to start a revolution in China.

The vegetarian restaurant owner frets over this culture's obsessive appetite for animals, including wild and even endangered creatures.

The former lawyer winces at the scorpions -- stingers still on -- silkworms and sparrow chicks-on-a-stick served up as snacks at street stalls, and the snakehead soup, peacocks and badgers offered in restaurants.

Then there are the more tame but, to her, still distasteful dishes, from dog and pigeon to pork lungs and solidified duck blood.

Xia wants to see her country eat less meat and animal organs and concentrate on a more healthful vegetarian diet.

"China," she says, "needs to enter the 21st century when it comes to its food."

Xia isn't the only one alarmed by the nation's dietary habits. International experts and many Chinese are concerned after a rash of food safety scares -- such as SARS and phony milk powder, markets selling chemical-tainted bean sprouts and restaurants that spiked their dishes with opium poppies to keep customers coming back.

The SARS outbreaks of the last two winters drew international attention to China's wild animal trade, with epidemiologists saying the respiratory disease may have come from civet cats, a species commonly eaten in southern China.

The sometimes fatal lung disease, which spread to 17 countries on five continents, has relented, but no one knows for how long -- or whether the virus for another potential outbreak might be lurking somewhere else in the Chinese diet.

"This is not going to go away," said Jeff Gilbert, a World Health Organization researcher.

Although international health advocates welcome the government's ban on eating and trading of wild animals in southern China's Guangdong province and elsewhere, they say a greater challenge lies in changing traditional attitudes that consider nearly all living things as frying pan fodder.

China's appetite for animals spans generations. In poor areas, residents have adapted their diet to whatever staples they can find, including cats, and even rats. Wealthy Chinese seek out bizarre and expensive dishes -- from peacocks to pangolins, a scaly relative of the anteater -- for their novelty. Others eat animal organs for their perceived medicinal benefits.

"It's a cultural thing, what people choose to eat," said Julie Hall, the WHO's SARS team leader in Beijing. "It's a sensitive issue in China."