Stay the #%$! away from our dog

The wars that the advanced countries in the world have gotten themselves mired in recently often seem to exhibit exactly that which you deplore -- the ability to kill because you have the power to do so.

Another point--giving 5 yuan is completely useless--it doesn't make the killing any better (in the sense of more moral), it doesn't really subtract from the suffering of the animals or people involved, and it's just a paltry sum of money in general. It's really a token, a meaningless one at that.

No animal rights activists at Shandong/Yunnan doing anything about it?

Welcome to China. It's not a surpise to me at all the way the government handle this incident. In fact, all the decision makers will get an award after all this is done. This is the most efficient way to solve problem. Animal/Human rights will cost money and a lot of time. Now, you know why China can move "forward" so fast in the last couple of year. Beside, it's good business sense. Just wondering, has anyone noticed any cheap dog meat menu pop up at restaurants lately?

I find the news that Jining City, Shandong, plans to slaughter perhaps 500,000 dogs beyond comprehension. I can't come to grips with the 50,556 dogs killed in Mouding County, Yunnan.

In Mouding County, even the 4,292 dogs vaccinated against rabies were put down because officials say the vaccines are not reliable. (So what was the point of giving them)

The dog killing patrols got every dog. They found the hidden dogs by setting off firecrackers during the nights. When they heard a bark, they would track down the dog. There were roadblocks set up on the roads out so no one could get away.

I don't have much sympathy for the people..a lot of them ate their dogs after killing them..sounds like country people with guard dogs mostly..but I am very sorry for the people with the 4,292 vaccinated dogs. And of course for all the poor dogs who died horribly.

I feel desolate about this and worried about the other dogs in China. There are some places/people who will not give their dogs up as easily as they did in Yunnan. Things could get even nastier than they are now.

Most of all I am furious with the Chinese government, both central and local, especially the local. Lazy, stupid, careless, corrupt, incompetent. Anyone could tell rabies was getting out of control; there was time to get the info, supplies and advice needed to control this, but no, more important things to think about like space exploration (!) and sending food and supplies to Lebanon and whatever other totally irrelevant ideas came to mind. (Ohhhh, just noticed smoke coming out of my ears, must calm down. Will take the Chinese local gov't approach of 'What, me worry?')

I read in the papers that some people/groups are outraged, for all the good that will do: The official newspaper Legal Daily blasted the killings as an “extraordinarily crude, cold-blooded and lazy way for the government to deal with epidemic disease.” “Wiping out the dogs shows these government officials didn’t do their jobs right in protecting people from rabies in the first place,” the newspaper, published by the central government’s Politics and Law Committee, said in an editorial in its online edition.

In an editorial, the official Xinhua News Agency said the killings wouldn’t have been necessary if the local government had been more attentive, but called the slaughter “the only way out of a bad situation.” “If they’d discovered this earlier, they could have vaccinated the dogs and ... controlled the outbreak,” the editorial said.

"I think this is completely insane," said Zhang Luping, founder of the Beijing Human and Animal Environmental Education Centre. What's more, this really damages our national image and sets a really bad example to show how lazy and inconsiderate those local government officials are," Zhang said.
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Some further links:

Message From Animals Asia:

Yunnan Dog Massacre, July 2006

http://www.animalsasia.org/index.php?module=3&menupos=10&submenupos=1&lg=en
-------------------------------------
Petition Site:

Say NO to mass dog slaughter in China
Target: Clark T. Randt, U.S. Ambassador to China

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/takeaction/131317412?ltl=1154711996
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World Health Organization

http://www.who.int/rabies/en/

"Let's hope that many of the folks in power in Shanghai (and elsewhere, for that matter) are themselves dog owners--or are married to or are parents of dog owners"

Hey, this is China, do you think what applies to the average Zhou applies to the city leaders? Their friends and extended family? I doubt it. Everyone elses' dogs die, but the mayor's pooch and the head of the Shanghai Party's pooch can romp together behind the tall walls of a luxurious villa community.

"I was simply thinking at the time that we might expect Shanghai to be a little less prone to "Thug Rule" policy, if that's what it is."

Yeah, and what happened in front of the Portman was just love taps and gentle pleas for order. Of course it is compared to what goes on in the countryside.

The vaccinations were probably mandatory and the same local officials that are collecting bounties on dead dogs made money off of the vaccinations. Some can indeed burn the candle at both ends.

Rabies is worse than AIDS in China? Uh-huh. I'll bet that one person got bit by rabies and thanks to blood pooling and dirty needles everyone is getting now, just like AIDS. And of course you can't get rabies from wild animals.

And the world will be a better place when we are all under heaven.

The following is an interesting post written by Merritt Clifton, editor of the US based newspaper, Animal People, in relation to what happened in Mouding County.
--------------------------------------------------
Merritt Clifton
Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE
Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

I posted the following background yesterday to a public health discussion board, at request of an official of the World Health Organization:

I have been reporting about animal welfare in China since September 1970, including as a regular part of my fulltime news beat since 1992.

Of importance in understanding the most recent dog massacre is understanding the regional and political history of dog-keeping. Dogs have been eaten in southern and coastal China since circa 1350, almost entirely in Cantonese-speaking areas, spreading into Mandarin-speaking areas mainly north of North Korea. Mandarin-speakers otherwise rarely eat dogs.

From 1949 until under 10 years ago, the Communist government actively discouraged keeping dogs as pets, because of Mao Tse Tung's view that dogs were parasites. Dog pogroms were common all over China.

Post-Mao, however, keeping dogs as pets became so popular, perhaps because of the one-child family policy leaving vacancies in homes, that China now has more pet dogs than any other nation, and a higher rate of keeping dogs as pets than any nations except the U.S. and Costa Rica (almost twice as high a rate, per household, as Britain and France.)

Unfortunately, access to anti-rabies vaccination and education about vaccination and good practices in dog-keeping have not grown with the dog population. Further, many public officials retain the old anti-dog perspectives of the Mao years.

Finally, there is an intense cultural conflict in the southern part of China, around Guangdong, the hub of both dog-eating and cat-eating, between the pet-keepers and the dog and cat eaters.

Often local governments are involved in operating huge dog and cat farms that produce dogs and cats for meat. These animals are not vaccinated against rabies because of the belief that vaccinated animals are not safe to eat. The dog and cat meat industries, which are just a fraction the size of the Chinese pet industry now, but are politically well-entrenched, feel intensely threatened by the growth of pro-animal opinion and the likelihood that eventually dog-eating and cat-eating will be banned. (Polls have shown majority disapproval of these practices for about eight years now.)

Rabies outbreaks serve the interest of the dog and cat meat industry by giving the local governments a pretext to crack down hard on pet-keeping.

Meanwhile, though this latest dog pogrom involved pets, it should be noted that several other recent pogroms did involve killing every dog on farms that had rabies outbreaks. There are many indications that the Chinese central government in Beijing is becoming fed up with the problems associated with raising dogs and cats en masse for slaughter, and may be looking for ways to phase it out.

Among the most telling of these indications are the openness of exposure and criticism of the most recent massacre--a marked contrast with how this sort of thing was handled only a few years ago, when word of dog pogroms reached us only through back-door channels.

Jonathan Watts of the Guardian reported from Beijing yesterday:

> The official newspaper Legal Daily blasted the killings as an
> "extraordinarily crude, cold-blooded and lazy way for the government to deal
> with epidemic disease," it said.
>
> "Wiping out the dogs shows these government officials didn't
> do their jobs right in protecting people from rabies in the first
> place," the newspaper, which is published by the central government's
> Politics and Law Committee, said in an editorial in its online edition.
>
> The Xinhua agency said, also in an editorial, that the
> killings would not have been necessary if the local government had
> been more attentive, but called the slaughter "the only way out of a
> bad situation."

The most noteworthy paragraph of Watts' coverage, however, may have been the final paragraph, where he mentioned that:

> Last year, two boys in Guangdong died of rabies, a disease against
> which their parents thought they had been inoculated. Police then
> found 40,000 boxes of fake vaccine.

If fake vaccines are being produced and distributed on that kind of scale, in the region where the dog massacre occurred, the panic response of the local officials to the rabies outbreak is much more understandable.

Finally, Ingrid Newkirk of PETA demonstrated her complete lack of comprehension of the entire situation by calling for a boycott of "anything from China."

Considering that this dog pogrom was actually among the smallest and most regionally limited of hundreds over the past half century, and that it was immediately denounced throughout China, including by the central government, this response is thoroughly inappropriate.

Quite to the contrary, now is the time for everyone who is in a position to do so to engage as actively as possible with China, to help inform, support, and encourage the fast-growing Chinese animal welfare movement.

Most ironic is that the Mouding dog massacre, proportionate to the Chinese population of 1.4 billion people, is actually much smaller in scope than the killing by PETA staff of several dozen "rescued" dogs and cats last year in small towns in North Carolina, for which two PETA staff members are soon to be tried on felony cruelty charges.

PETA killed 1,911 of the 2,225 animals it "rescued" in 2003, the most recent year for which I have the PETA statistics: more than were killed by 75% of the animal control shelters in Virginia, where PETA is located, and more than twice the rate of animal control killing for the U.S. as a whole.

[ANIMAL PEOPLE is the leading independent newspaper providing original investigative coverage of animal protection worldwide,
founded in 1992. Our readership of 30,000-plus includes the decision-makers at more than 10,000 animal protection organizations. We have no alignment or affiliation with any other entity.]

Ah, the commie huggers have arrived.

The Internet plus Beer makes for strange bedfellows, perhaps?

Hey at least they ate the dogs when they were finished, that's more than PETA did I'm sure.

In recent weeks I have noticied that the cat population in my neighborhood seems out of control. Cats are good at taking care of themselves and keeping the rat population down, but seriously I would mind a little cat culling in the near future.

Thanks for posting that, Bliss. Very worrying.

Just read this on the AnimalsAsia site re Shandong:

Shandong reacts to rabies deaths with massive dog cull - Authorities order the slaughter of thousands of dogs

We have had confirmation from our Chinese supporters living in Shandong Province that a brutal dog cull has begun in Jining. This is in response to 16 deaths from rabies in the last 8 months. Government officials announced plans to kill all dogs within a 5 mile radius of the recent rabies outbreaks, but have not disclosed how many dogs will be killed. Animals Asia has sent an urgent letter to the Shandong authorities (similar to the letter we sent to the Yunnan authorities last week), and is also requesting urgent meetings with the Central Government in Beijing - where we hope to bring together key Chinese animal welfare advocates to discuss what is needed from within to address the problems of rabies and stray dog control throughout China.

...

http://www.animalsasia.org/index.php?module=3&menupos=10&submenupos=1&lg=en#top

Aren't you glad you moved to the world's future superpower to breath poison air, bathe and wash clothes in poison water, and watch dogs get beat to death by wise local officials?

Although the gasing of animals was a common practice which ceased over 20 yrs ago for most of the U.S,there are still a select few backward assed redneck towns in the south and possibly a couple in wyoming or montana that still practice by gasing animals with their pickup truck tailpipe running into a small room. I would like to gas those individuals just for the fun of it. However, China and other Asian countries have no regard for anything, which is why it is such a messed up part of the world. Of course the dogs run wild in the streets, sincethey do not believe in spay or neutering animals since the humans themselves do not mind living in an overcrowded and unhealthy environment themselves, like ants or coachroaches.Although I love to travel, you would have to put me in a pine box before I would set foot on their soil. All of my animals are fixed, and 4 of them were ferral cats which were rescued from the streets. The way then normally kill dogs and cats in asia is either to starve them and let them eat each other or to put them in large metal cages and toss them off a boat to drown them. And lets not forget how they heard a large mass of animals into a small room with a metal floor and them poor water onto it and run electricity through it. Lovely. If you disagree with me, just take a stroll through the markets, you can pick out your dog to eat, watch them beat it by hanging it two inches off the floor. They think the adrenaline makes the meat taste better. Dumbasses. That only works with weed. If someone tried to hurt my dog, my only option would be to go to jail for what I would do to them. Once in Turkey a man kicked my dog in front of a large group of men in front of a coffee house. He almost died of a heart attack when I started to beat the living snot out of him. Im sure he no longer thinks that women are the weaker sex. At least not American women (from NY).