To Rick Cluff and Early Edition producers and reporter Pamela Post,
earlyed@vancouver.cbc.ca postp@vancouver.cbc.ca

Thank you so much - all of you - for doing this story. AAS is going to try to find what it would cost to do a DNA test. If we can manage it we will let you know.

You asked if the issue was cultural. The answer is Yes, it is. Of course it is not more immoral to wear dog fur than chinchilla fur, and fur farming in the West is also cruel, with animals crammed into stacked and filthy cages. What sets the Chinese dog fur issue apart morally is the way the dogs (and cats) are killed. It is so savagely cruel that it crosses our line of what is evil.

All animals communicate with us with their eyes and bodies, but none more so than dogs, and it frightens us that a culture can be unmoved by the fear and begging in a dog's eyes as it is being skinned. It is important for the Chinese community in Canada to understand that we are not just sickened by that, but we are frightened by it. We feel defenceless against an evil so great that we can barely comprehend it.

When I say a culture, I want to be clear that though there is an emergent animal welfare movement in China and there are individual Chinese who are also upset, there is no 'cultural shift' among Asians as there was in the West beginning two hundred years ago.

Thanks to your coverage, the issue was 'shifted' - and not insignificantly!

Judy Stone