Cultures Clash Over Sales of Live Turtles, Frogs

For five years, Oakland animal rights activist Eric Mills has fought to ban a practice he considers cruel and barbarous: the sale and slaughter of live turtles and bullfrogs in California’s Chinatown food markets.

For much of that time, San Francisco businessman Pius Lee has fought to preserve that same practice, a centuries-old culinary tradition he believes has been singled out in a campaign with thinly veiled racial undertones.

Two years ago the battle between Mills and Lee--and the dueling forces they represent--moved from the Asian marketplaces of Los Angeles and San Francisco to the statewide stage of Sacramento. The state Fish and Game Commission was weighing a ban on importing the live reptiles and amphibians for human consumption. In a preemptive strike, a Japanese American state legislator was pushing a bill to ban such a ban.

Both sides had hoped for a final resolution to their emotional conflict. But efforts to negotiate a compromise have gone nowhere, and the controversy is about to leave Sacramento exactly where it began, with legislation saying the dispute does not lend itself to statewide solutions and formally passing the buck to local authorities.

A classic example of the debate over what is cruelty and what is culture, it illuminates the difficulty of making laws in a state as ethnically diverse as California.

Animal rights activists are outraged by the inaction, saying their cause has become a victim of political correctness. A ban, they say, will never see the light of day in a city like San Francisco, where Chinese American merchants are a powerful political force. In fact, such efforts have already failed there.

“We’ve tried lawsuits, we’ve gone to the Legislature, we’ve gone to the Board of Supervisors. What am I supposed to do?” Mills said. “I’ve been called a Nazi in the Asian press. I don’t want to do a ballot initiative, because I think it could get really ugly. But that may be my only choice.”

Chinese American business groups, which have launched an educational campaign in major Chinatowns to promote better treatment of the animals, are pleased that a state ban appears to have been thwarted. But they are convinced their foes will not give up the fight.

“Bullfrogs and turtles have been in our diet for centuries. They are a vital ingredient in many recipes and herbal remedies,” said Chi Mui of Los Angeles’ Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Assn., which has been fighting for the rights of Chinese immigrants since 1854. “You can cook a lobster in boiling water. If you go to a slaughterhouse, the way chickens are killed is not great for the chickens. I don’t see how this is any different.”

There are many points of contention in this debate, centering on three allegations by environmentalists and animal rights activists, all deemed exaggerated or untrue by Chinese merchants and their supporters:

Turtles and bullfrogs are painfully flayed and dismembered alive in the markets. Turtles and bullfrogs are also being sold alive, which allows Buddhist groups and other objectors to buy them and release them into the wild, where they trample delicate habitats and usurp native species. Both types of animals are so dehydrated, malnourished and diseased due to lack of care--even a case of malaria is alleged--that they are unfit for human consumption.

Foes also contend that the turtles are being plucked from other parts of the country, depleting local populations. Animal groups had complained that frogs captured in California were being sold as food, but a state crackdown, humorously dubbed “Operation Kermit,” has apparently put an end to that practice. They concede that most frogs are now imported from Asian farms.

The Fish and Game Commission was unsure of how to deal with the litany of complaints from animal activists, in part because there was a dispute over whether the turtles were grown on farms, which would have affected whether they could legally be sold alive. But they opted in 1998 to entertain a ban on importing both types of animals.

That caught the attention of Assemblyman Mike Honda (D-San Jose), who eventually introduced legislation to prevent the ban. In response to Honda’s move, state officials backed off, opting to wait until the Legislature had its say.

Honda’s bill was subsequently watered down, and now only states that the issue should be handled at the local level. It recently sailed through the Assembly’s appropriations and wildlife committees.

“I wanted to put a period at the end of the sentence,” Honda said in an interview, explaining why he continued to pursue legislation after the state backed down. “The Chinese folks and Vietnamese who would have been affected by this are a population that does not always have a voice.”

No one expects Honda’s bill to be the final word.