I'm sorry, but the hell with their complaints

Ban on live turtle, frog sales assailed

Marisa Lagos, Chronicle Sacramento Bureau

Thursday, May 6, 2010

Asian American politicians and merchants are seething over a new state ban on the importation of live turtles and frogs for sale as food, saying the policy unfairly targets Chinese businesses while ignoring the pet shop industry.

The California Fish and Game Commission adopted the ban last month to prevent people from releasing nonnative species into the state's sensitive habitats. But opponents point out that merchants - who hawk fish and other seafood as well as turtles and frogs for people to eat - are already barred from selling the animals alive.

On Tuesday, six Asian American state legislators, including Assemblywoman Fiona Ma and Sen. Leland Yee, both Democrats from San Francisco, sent a letter to the commission asking it to reconsider the policy.

A "disturbing" part of the policy, they wrote, is that it "appears to disproportionately target Asian American owned businesses," - businesses, they note, that are largely owned and managed by first-generation immigrants.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/05/06/BADH1D99NR.DTL

Time to join the 21st century, people. I could care less who it "targets"

:sarcasm:

"a new state ban on the importation of live turtles and frogs for sale as food, saying the policy unfairly targets Chinese businesses while ignoring the pet shop industry"

"adopted the ban last month to prevent people from releasing nonnative species into the state's sensitive habitats"

Why can the pet stores still import the turtles and frogs? Something seems fishy (pun intended). Seems to me a pet store animal would be more likely to released live into the sensitive habitats than a restaurant animal.

Time to join the 21st century, people.

What makes the old policy incompatible with the date?

the real concern is how the animals are treated during transit and how they are killed - the release issue is just being used as a justification. I'd guess there are already laws about humane treatment and transportation, so the unstated assumption here appears to be that the immigrant community won't obey those laws and the DFG can't enforce them, so they need to try an end-around.

I would agree that pet sales are more likely to lead to releases, but whether animals are treated better in transit to a pet store I don't know...

Lobsters are often kept in over crowed tanks until they are boiled alive.

If the ban is about habitats then pet stores would be included, if the ban was about transport and kills then lobsters would be included.

Doesn't add up.

to eat and the 'normal' way to transport live animals. I don't know what the DFG is reacting to in the turtle and frog trade, so it's possible that the transport of lobsters is acceptably humane, but my suspicion is that the complaining restaurants have a point and the commission is exhibiting a cultural bias.

On the other hand, it's possible that the frogs and turtles in question are in fact a greater risk to habitat once released than lobsters or animals in the pet trade. IIRC, the snakehead is a particularly damaging escaped food fish, and California has bans on some species of crawfish to prevent escapes...

Now I'm hungry for a mess of frog legs! :crazy:

selling them live, which industry is contributing to the release of non-native species?

could be part of the problem. :shrug:

If this is racism, you are a racist too.

Racial profiling of crustaceans, amphibians and reptiles is not what this country is about.