Man Eats Man's Best Friend

While you're busy worrying about human rights in China, author and journalist Ted Kerasote argues, add animal rights to the list. After a trip to a ski camp in China where he was befriended by a "dead ringer for Lassie," he was appalled to find his canine pal served as the main dish at a feast in his honor.

Chinese cats and dogs are not only eaten; each year 2 million are brutally killed—even skinned alive—for their fur, which is sold on the black market, Kerasote writes for Salon. The practice is more than a cultural difference, he says; it's "deplorable," especially because they're pets, often stolen from families. "It's one more shadow cast by the Olympic flame," he writes. (More pets stories.)