Episode 16: We Almost Didn’t Publish This Episode About Penis Restaurants In China

Good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the PET | TAO Holistic Pet Products Podcast.

I'm your host, Dr. Marc Smith, 20-year practicing veterinarian and co-creator of PET | TAO Holistic Pet Products.

I've got a podcast today that's really going to make you laugh, it's really funny. I thought I'd tell you about it, because see in my practice, I do a lot of Chinese medicine, Eastern medicine, and even though a lot of what we do in Eastern medicine is cool, and it's neat, and it's interesting, and it does help pets and animals, sometimes there's a dark side.

I was reading today an article in TIME Magazine about how traditional Chinese medicine and the resurgence of traditional Chinese medicine in China, because of their growing fluids has led to the slaughter of a lot of animals and a lot of animal parts in the procurement of a lot of animal parts.

They're used in Eastern medicine and used in Chinese medicine. The interesting thing about it is, that this article, it started off and I really don't know if I'm going to pronounce these words right, but the article started off by discussing or talking about a restaurant that specializes in the sale of penises.

Yes, you heard me right. Penises and testicles. Yes, you heard me right again, testicles.

This restaurant, it's almost unbelievable, but it is a franchise. It has 19 different restaurants all across China. The one we're going to be discussing today is in Beijing China, one of the biggest cities in the entire country.

The funny thing about this is that these restaurants, like I said, they specialize in selling penises and testicles. They sell penises and testicles from all different types of animals.

The reason why they sell these body parts is because in Eastern medicine every different body part has an energy that's associated with it. When that energy is deficient, then you eat the body part associated with the deficiency.

As I'm sure you can appreciate, the profit center from the penis restaurant is yes, you guessed it, middle-aged men.

Middle-aged men that want to gain back their vitality and their masculinity, and middle-aged men that want to prove their self worth.

They rush into these restaurants and they order penises and testicles with the hope that eating this food will supply the energy to help their own penis and testicles perform normally and perform optimally.

What this type of behavior has done, is that it has put at risk many different types of animals, because of the illegal trade associated with harvesting these animals and of course, selling their body parts.

I want to read you this quote from one of the cooks at one of these restaurants. What he says is the following, "In terms of nourishing the yang, tiger penis is definitely at the top. If you handle tiger penis properly and mix together with Chinese herbs, it really has the best possible effect, much better than Viagra. In fact, lots of people come here asking for tiger penis and it's illegal and so therefore we don't sell it."

That quote came straight from one of the restaurateurs that's involved with this penis restaurant. I can't pronounce the name, or I would, but you can look it up on the internet and get more information for yourself.

The thing about these body parts is that according to Chinese medicine, they are yang foods. What we call yang foods. They're outward foods, their energy goes outward, it goes upward, it's pronounced, it's strong, it provides all those things that a lot of these middle aged men want when they go to these restaurants that sell all these different penises.

They sell bull penises, they sell fur seal penises, they sell tiger penises. The sad thing about this is that you can meet these energetic effects by consuming other things from animals that are not so exotic, or not so far-fetched maybe.

You can eat beef kidney, or you can eat kidney, or you can eat even testicles in this country. In the US we have what we call Rocky Mountain spotted oysters and those are bull testicles that are fried up that are actually pretty good to eat. I've eaten many of them and I'm sure a lot of you have as well.

This idea and this act of harvesting these animals and this act of this illegal animal harvest to propagate something when other options exist, to me has got to stop and it's ludicrous and we do not need to be, as Chinese medicine practitioners such as myself, we do not need to be propagating these type of behaviors.

I hope you've enjoyed this podcast on penises. I know that's a funny topic and everybody's laughing in the background, but yes, it is true there are restaurants that sell penises specifically and they're in China and you're welcome to look those up.

If you like what I talked about today, then give us a rating on iTunes, or if you want to know more about Eastern medicine or things we can do at PET | TAO to help your pet, then go to www.pettao.com and please join us next time as we bring you more interesting information to help you and your pet. Thank you.