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Marine fights Vietnam's dog-meat tradition

By Steve Chawkins, Los Angeles Times, 13 December 2010

More than three decades after the war in Vietnam, a Marine named Robert Luciushad a moment of reckoning on the road to Lai Chau. A naval attach at the U.S.Embassy in Hanoi, he was bound for a rural clinic with a donation of medicalequipment. When his car was passed by a motorbike with a wicker basket fullofdogs, he locked eyes with one of them. "There was an immediate sense ofconnection," he said. "You could see the fear, the dread, the helplessness."A visionraced through his mind: Liberate the dogs. Have his driver overtake the bike and diginto his wallet anything to keep them from being served up in restaurants downthe road.

Lucius, now 42, did nothing. He didn't, he said, want to be seen as a "culturalimperialist" bent on changing a local custom merely because it offended him. Butlater that day, after a celebratory meal with Vietnamese colleagues, he saw a dogskinned and splayed out on a restaurant kitchen floor. "That dog was every dog," hesaid. "Like a light switch, my life flipped from darkness to light."

Lucius renounced meat. Then he became a vegan. Now, two years after his returnfrom Vietnam, he has started the Kairos Coalition, a nonprofit aimed at endinganimal cruelty and making amends for what he sees as his cowardice on the road toLai Chau that day in 2006. Kairos is a Greek term loosely translated as "timely

opportunity." For Lucius, who today is a lieutenant colonel and assistant provost atthe Defense Language Institute in Monterey, Calif., that means training young peoplein Vietnam to stage performances about the immorality of animal cruelty. He calls it"humane edutainment."

Like the wandering "culture and drama teams" that Ho Chi Minh employed to rallysupport decades ago, the Kairos troupe is being trained to use puppets and masks,songs and dance. The members have put on a couple of events and have morescheduled at schools and universities throughout Hanoi. The idea is to drawaudience members into the action, getting them to think about everyday cruelty. At aworkshop in Hanoi last month, Lucius and two American volunteers gave their

players a situation that called for quick ethical thinking: A couple comes upon asuffering watchdog, chained outside a shop with no food or water. After discussing anumber of alternatives, the actors decided to pressure the shop owner indirectly by appealing to his neighbors.

One of the subjects that Lucius and his students discussed was the eating of dogmeat. It was a touchy area, he said, particularly because of the torture and beatingssuffered by many dogs bound for the table. In Vietnam and elsewhere in Asia, somebelieve that dog meat enhances the male libido especially if the dogs are stressedbefore being killed. "What we did agree on is that it's unnecessary to treat theanimals so cruelly in the run-up to the slaughter," said Lucius, who has received a

grant from Humane Society International.

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Andrea Nguyen, an expert on Vietnamese cooking, said Lucius' group is fighting anuphill battle in taking on the dog-meat tradition. "I certainly respect his effort tochange people's minds, and Vietnam is indeed changing," said Nguyen, a SantaCruz cookbook author whose family fled to the United States in 1975. "On the otherhand, there's this whole thing of how wonderful the meat is supposed to taste. Then

there's the virility thing, and the fact that it's a longstanding source of protein. He's upagainst all that."

Dog is not part of everyday cuisine in Vietnam, Nguyen said: "It's nhau noshingfood. It's for when you and your buddies get together on the weekend over somebeer, some rice wine, some moonshine." In Vietnam, as elsewhere, people haveconsumed dogs and cats in times of privation. But many Vietnamese also have dogsas beloved pets. "One of my biggest traumas was to leave my dogs behind when Iwas 11," said Andrew Lam, a Vietnamese American writer based in San Francisco."We couldn't take them when we fled as refugees."

Lam, whose latest essay collection is "East Eats West," said Lucius' campaign"could be interpreted as a very condescending Western attitude." "I doubt this oneman will be able to change the mindset whatsoever," he said. "I see it as a quixoticeffort." Lucius is an optimist. "We have a huge animal rights movement here joustingagainst factory farming, but they're making headway," he said, referring to the U.S."Some people would say that's quixotic too." In Asia, he said, local organizations areshifting public opinion against inhumane practices such as extracting bile atraditional medicine from the gallbladders of living bears.

As Vietnam prospers and more people have pets, attitudes toward eating dog havechanged but not, Lucius said, fast enough. He has been a Marine for 22 years,trained to shoot down enemy aircraft and missiles. Then he was selected as aforeign affairs officer for Indonesia and then Vietnam. In 2008, People for the EthicalTreatment of Animals named him "the sexiest vegetarian" in the Marine Corps. Hechuckles over the honor, but he's dead serious about the cause: When he retiresnext year, he may devote himself completely to animal rights. "My time in theMarines has made me more sensitive," he said. "I've seen how cultures andtraditions change over time."

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