mysqldump question

I am trying to get rid of the \ escape characters. I am on version 4.0.21.

When I try to export the data using mysqldump, the utility adds a \ before
the < characters. I tried using --fields-escaped-by="" but got the error --
option '--fields-escaped-by' cannot take an argument.
How can I get rid of the \ before <ABC>, <a href> etc.?

cat test.sh
DATABASE="rktemp"
USERNAME="root"
DESTINATION_PATH="/home/rkapur/rktemp"

mysqldump -u ${USERNAME} -p -T
${DESTINATION_PATH} --fields-terminated-by='<ec>' --lines-terminated-by='<er>'
${DATABASE} testrk

lalo:/home/rkapur/rktemp >
../test.sh ;cat testrk.txt
Enter password:

1<ec>ABC<ec>\<ABC><er>2<ec>DEF<ec>\<a href> ABC
\</a><er>3<ec>?<ec>"'"<er>4<ec>#<ec>c:\\aproj\\main<e r>lalo:/home/rkapur/rktemp
>

lalo:/home/rkapur/rktemp >
===========================
Here is the raw data ....
mysql> use rktemp
Database changed
mysql> select * from testrk;
+-------+-----------+-------------------+
| rk_id | rk_char_1 | rk_text_1 |
+-------+-----------+-------------------+
| 1 | ABC | <ABC> |
| 2 | DEF | <a href> ABC </a> |
| 3 | ? | "'" |
| 4 | # | c:\aproj\main |
+-------+-----------+-------------------+
4 rows in set (0.01 sec)

mysql>