On another subject, I was reading an email from In Defense of Animals (IDA) and it appears China is on another dog culling mission. Apparently, on 7 November 2006, they started murdering dogs in the city of Beijing. Especially large-sized dogs (licensed or not), unregistered dogs without photo-identification, strays, or any dogs over the one-dog-per-family allowance. Their goal is to make Beijing "rabies-free" before the 2008 Olympics. WTF?!?!?! Do they really need to go there?
As someone who is a devoted animal lover and shares her life with four dogs, I am absolutely bloody outraged. And there's not a fucking thing I can do to stop this. No government can tell China what to do. No amount of petitions, awareness, etc seems to work.The Chinese government simply doesn't give a fuck.
Déjà vu: The Chinese government is demanding the dog cullings again:
An unfortunate dog caught up in the Chinese rabies scare. One of the 55,000+ dogs who lost their lives in August 2006.
The result of human overreaction.
This quote from the IDA article completely stood out: "If the city of Beijing is modern enough to host the Olympic Games, then they certainly have the ability to humanely manage communicable diseases through such measures as vaccinations and spaying/neutering of companion animals."
According to an article on Bloomberg.com, "police are killing strays before they can bite people, and ordering owners to register their pets. Beginning Nov. 1, owners without a credit card-sized license bearing their pet's photo will face fines of up to 5,000 yuan ($635) and the confiscation of the animal. Beijing authorities also introduced a one-dog per owner policy and is enforcing a decade-old ban on ``violent and large dogs,'' such as German shepherds.
Police are stepping up enforcement as the rate of infection rises and China is spending $34 billion in preparation for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. More than 8,900 unregistered dogs were nabbed in the city this year, Xinhua reported last month".
I'm sure they were allowed to live....
This bothers me, as well. From Bloomberg.com:
"Even large-sized licensed dogs are being targeted. Yangguang is a registered and vaccinated Golden Retriever, whose owners call a good-natured pet. Yet, they found a notice on their front door last month advising that neighborhood regulations deemed the dog a threat to safety and public health. If not gone within a week, the notice said the dog would be impounded and possibly destroyed.
``We see all the small dogs still in the neighborhood and think, how was our dog any different?'' said Li Meng, 26, who bought Yangguang, which means ``Sunshine'' in Chinese, over the Internet for her father. The pet is now living with a friend in another Beijing suburb. ``It's hard to say whether they're really doing this to control rabies or just to make money.''
What? Money couldn't possibly be a motivating factor?
"Tactics deployed by the city's dog inspectors aren't always civil, said Jeff He, a spokesman for the International Fund for Animal Welfare in Beijing. In one case, a dog was beaten to death in front of its owner. Police have cut power and water supply to homes suspected of abetting clandestine canines, he said.
Concern over the disease in August prompted organized squads of citizens in Shanghai, and in Yunnan and Shandong provinces to organize to beat dogs to death. Unvaccinated strays pose the greatest risk of spreading rabies in urban areas, according to the WHO."
How thoughtful of these people to get together and rid their cities of the problem.
Check them out in action:
Year of the Dog????
"Asia accounts for more than 80 percent of rabies cases worldwide, according to a study by researchers in China and the U.K. published in December in Emerging Infectious Diseases journal. In China, 103,200 people died of rabies in four epidemic waves between 1950 and 2004, the study's authors said. Human cases are now approaching levels not seen since the 1980s.
A ``fifth epidemic wave of rabies that began in the 1990s is gaining momentum,'' the authors said. Abandoned dogs bear much the blame, they said.
``In China it is extortionately expensive to register an animal,'' the WHO's Hall said. Pets are often kept illegally and unvaccinated, she added, recommending that vaccination be compulsory and cheap.
Initial registration costs 1,000 yuan ($127) and includes the first rabies vaccination. The fee, including a booster shot, declines to 500 yuan in subsequent years.
In New York, by contrast, the annual registration costs $2.50 for a dog that has been neutered or spayed, and $10.50 for others. A rabies shot goes for about $10.
China has about 150 million pet dogs. The number has climbed 30 percent in the past five years, Euromonitor Plc said in a report last year. The market research company attributes the increase to the desire among one-child households for an extra companion and as a source of comfort for older people."
Check out the following links. I will post more as the story continues:
Bloomberg.com: click
here
IDA.org: click here
IFAW.org: click here
UPDATE: from www.animalsasia.org, a November 2006 update regarding the Chinese dog culls. Click here to read it.
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