Naked China: Out of Control

why. why do we have to kill. why do we disturb the sanctity of life. i am going to follow a better path because of this video.

Please air this on TV often. Most people have no idea of what happens to animals in China. I have a feeling there isn't PETA there...

I thought I knew much about China. But knowing that dogs and cats are routinely eaten there and seeing the treatment of "live food" is completely different.

The treatment of the dogs and cats were inhumane, completely heartless and gross. The peacocks and ducklings were packed in those cages just like the dogs and cats.. I cannot fathom getting used to suffering animals, not in any environment.

Thank you for that coverage. In the west, we put such a high regard on life (most do), that we cannot imagine such actions.

Again, thank you.

this pod always kinda bothers me because miss ling could have very easily gone to a corporate slaughterhouse here in the u.s. & seen just as much if not more terribly gross conditions & horrendous treatment of all of the much larger animals that feed americans.

this pod definitely appeals to sympathies of americans that seem to care more about their pets than homeless people & the false sense of animal hierarchy we have in the u.s.

I appreciate the coverage of the animal markets in the context of avian flu and other public health concerns, given the PRC government's track record of poor response and cover-ups.
That said, the coverage of blatant animal cruelty in China without a comparative component that would put this behavior in context of American/Western livestock practices and mass stock rearing denounces Chinese practices unfairly.
This kind of coverage is clearly important but only pointing out the reprehensible behaviors of another culture (exoticized- with added shock value given that some food animals there are considered domestic companion animals here) does a disservice to the US public.
I get the focus on China, but it needs comparable information about livestock slaughter and processing in the States.

Yes, it was very moving. More and more, I'm turning to current tv for my journalistic pieces. These reporters are top-notch, and they seem to go just about anywhere in the world, no matter that many of the places where they go prosecute (or even kill) journalists who try to get at the bare truth.

I'm with you, narcoleptic_insomnia -- I felt like crying through most of the pod. It was very sad.

I see where China is going to stop selling dog meat during the Olympics! I know it's a cultural thing -- a lot of the animals that we in the U.S. consider "pets," other people consider them to be food, even gourmet delicacies. I'm thinking of dogs, cats, guinea pigs, etc.

An extremely moving piece of journalism -- I could barely focus my thoughts due to the disturbing animal cruelty...

...that scene with the cat nearly made me physically ill right before Laura vomited... I felt like crying through 2/3's of the pod... excellent work!

I guess as long as there are markets for anything, then somewhere, people will try to provide the supply for the demand. But we have to draw the line somewhere, or the results are disastrous, which is why some of those plants in China were closed. Yes, bad conditions can exist anywhere in the world, as we recently saw with the cattle in this country, processed for meat, even though many of them were too sick to even stand. Or look at what's happening in terms of "mad cow" disease. Or more and more cases that we hear about, of E. Coli outbreaks, Listeria, etc.

I read a report that told why many of the strains of influenza originate in China -- I'm thinking of why there's a need for some kind of legal/ethical solution to rampant animal abuse, especially where animals are food -- it's because the people on the farms in the rural areas live in such proximity to the animals. There's the potential for cross-species contagion. That's what's disturbing about China, since, as Ling reported in her story, China has 20% of the world's poultry.

I knew someone who worked in a chicken processing plant in Salisbury, MD, home to the famous Purdue Co., and she refused to eat chicken because she knew about the horrible conditions in that plant. I had driven through Salisbury, and the stench is something else. So yes, it can happen just about anywhere in the world. We often think that the laws in the U.S. or the European Union are tougher, but even in these countries, laws are broken for the sake of the money.

I agree with triniboy, many of the Chinese people live in abject poverty, and while actions such as the one's shown in this pod should never be condoned, sadly in many of these situations, it is do or die.

Also, my mother has visited a chicken farm in Kentucky and the conditions the chickens live under are a little better, but still horrendous. One does not need to go to China to see animals being abused, Americans do it too.

The images from this Pod are still haunting me on day 2.

I agree -- the level of suffering is wrong on so many levels. And you're right, Purdey, the potential for avian flu (and other diseases) is just the beginning. Especially when we consider that China has 20% of the world's poultry. And the world's largest population. A train wreck just waiting to happen.

A farmed animal is farmed for food.

But the level of suffering these animals are endurring is so very wrong.

As for the potential for disease avian flu I think is only the start.

Even though these merchants need money, this is just wrong to benefit off another living thing's pain.

Terrible, terrible and terrible! We need to scream out this things!

That was insanely disturbing. Being an animal lover myself (prefering cats) I found it hard to watch some of this, and I had to turn away during some of the cat being moved from one cage to another.

I didn't quite vomit over it but it made me sick. It just gives me shudders.

I guess that's what Current's Vanguard Journalism's like, almost uncencored, keeping the, sometimes disturbing, truth in.

What a powerful piece! I'm constantly impressed by the work of Laura Ling and other journalists like her. I can just imagine how hard she tried not to get sick -- but it was impossible among the stench of those places, plus seeing the cruelty to the animals.

It's puzzling how China expects to jump into the 21st century and maintain cultural acts like this, especially as we know more and more how it's all tied together -- the horrible things mankind is doing to other animal and plant systems, the environment in general, all in the name of what?

It's very sad that there is no world entity (WHO?) that can bring China and other countries to task for what is obviously a dangerous condition, a train wreck waiting to happen -- avian flu is just the beginning, I fear.

Excellent photojournalism. I commend the people who did this. I love how they just walked among the people. Sure, many of them didn't want to talk to them, but it got the journalists right there in the thick of things just by getting out in that horrible world. Very sad state of affairs. I wonder where these people and animals will be hidden this summer when the Olympics get under way? Something to think about!

....Although the cruelty shown in this pod is horrible and inexcusable, at the same time I cant help but feel for that poor man that said that "why should he be worried about contracting the avian flu, I am so poor," I wonder what those that made a living in those markets that was closed, and those that will be, will be resorted to do to make a living... the vicious circle of life i guess...

I have to say that this is a piece that more people need to watch. Everyone has heard the "stories" of China eating what most people call pets, but this was beyond shocking. I have to say I probably cried for an hour straight after watching it and I think that it takes more bravery to go there and see it in person. I hope that this video is passed around more so that everyone can stop taking a blind eye to what is going on.

truly disturbing pod, but you handled it well. i'd watched a similar piece years ago on one of the network shows, and this was just as shocking the second time around. great work on bringing these issues to light.

For Christ sake, is the only damn thing you care about is avian flu? Why do you not advise the public that the illegal trade in wildlife is responsible for the extinction of many species. According to the National Academy of Sciences, mankind is responsible for the annual extinction of between 18,000 and 50,000 plant/animal species. How many more broken links in the chain of life can the planet endure before the world's ecosystem implodes? At the current rate I'm afraid we will discover the answer in the coming decades. And all Lisa Ling is concerned over is the potential effect of avian flu on human populations- shameful.

This pod was unbelievably shocking to me. I have seen some messed up things online and on t.v. in my 28 years of life. I even got through 2 girls and one cup without turning it off, but I had to stop watching this pod. If there was any information on support to stop this I would like to know. I would definitely like to support but I would really hate to watch that pod again. Keep up the wonderful work Lauraling! (< :

This piece made me feel things i have never felt before. I have watched many animal cruelty videos and seen some bad stuff, but what was displayed in this pod was real. Very alarming, but real. Which is the way i think journalism should be now. I applaude each and every person who helped with this pod. They need to shut down all of those types of markets because it could get out of hand...fast.

wow what a shocking piece.

Mitch and I did get into a big argument about the barf scene. He thought I should let the scene play out where I vomit several times, so as to stay true to the reality of events. I considered cutting the part altogether, because I didn't want to pod to be about me, but about the story. In the end, I'm happy with what we decided to show. It lets the viewer in on the experience/reaction that I had to the marketplace, without being overly indulgent. Some things are better left on the cutting room floor. Or in this case, left on the side of the road in China.

If you can look past the gruesome aspects of this piece, and that could be tough, you should see two things about Vanguard's technique, as embodied here by Laura. First, the way that the story unfolds is pretty much how it unfolded. We got on a train in Hong Kong in the morning with Alice, our interpreter whom we'd never met, and road into the city of Guangzhou in mainland China, without journalist visas. [When Laura and I made a similar transit exactly a year later, November of 2006, I got stopped and interrogated by the Customs officer about why I was bringing in a Sony Z-1 camera and what I did for a living--I was able to stare blankly at her, until she let me through.] We thought we were going to a market where they sold civet cats--supposedly the reason that the SARS outbreak started in Guangzhou in November of 2002. We weren't expecting to see what we saw. The second thing that is worth noting is that within a few months of this CNN had some footage of animal cruelty in Guangzhou that they got from an animal rights group--grainy hidden video. Laura got our video by walking up to people and asking if we could videotape them--a phenomenal power, and also a more transparent approach, we think... Lastly, Laura actually threw up four times on camera--it was quite an epic--but cut the other times out of the final version. We got into a big fight about it... Looking at this version, I concede that she did a brilliant job, but I still miss the longer sequence, plus the shot of her packing breath mints in to clean the taste out of her mouth as we prepared to go into a second market for round two...