*WARNING* not for the dog lovers/light stomachs

[Dakafall]

Chinese county clubs to death 50,000 dogs
Campaign against rabies prompts mass slaughter in southwestern China

SHANGHAI, China - China slaughtered 50,000 dogs in a government-ordered crackdown after three people died of rabies, sparking unusually pointed criticism in state media Tuesday and an outcry from animal rights activists.

Health experts said the brutal policy pointed to deep weaknesses in the health care infrastructure in China, where only 3 percent of dogs are vaccinated against rabies and more than 2,000 people die of the disease each year.

The five-day slaughter in Mouding county in Yunnan province in southwestern China ended Sunday and spared only military guard dogs and police canine units, state media reported.

Dogs being walked were seized from their owners and beaten to death on the spot, the Shanghai Daily newspaper reported. Led by the county police chief, killing teams entered villages at night creating noise to get dogs barking, then beat the animals to death, the reports said.

Owners were offered 63 cents per animal to kill their own dogs before the teams were sent in, they said.

The killings were widely discussed on the Internet, with both legal scholars and animal rights activists criticizing them as crude and cold-blooded. The World Health Organization said more emphasis needed to be placed on rabies prevention.

Mass killings condemned
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.

Pet activists call for boycott
The killings prompted calls for a boycott of Chinese products from the activist group People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

“We are urging everyone to actively boycott — not a word we use lightly — anything from China given the bludgeoning killing of thousands of dogs,” PETA President Ingrid Newkirk said.

She said the group had canceled all orders of merchandise it sells that are made in China. Will Wright, at PETA’s European office in London, said the orders were worth about $300,000.

“We believe other groups will join us in expressing outrage over the blatant cruelty to animals the world is witnessing,” Wright said.

Mouding County officials defended the slaughter in a region where about 360 of the 200,000 residents suffered dog bites this year, with three people reportedly dying of rabies, including a 4-year-old girl.

“With the aim to keep this horrible disease from people, we decided to kill the dogs,” Li Haibo, a spokesman for the county government, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

Calls to county government offices went unanswered Tuesday. Located in mountains about 1,240 miles southwest of Shanghai, Mouding is famed for its Buddhist shrines.

A dog's life for real
Unlike in the West, where dogs have long been cherished as companions or helpmates, dogs have rarely had an easy time in China. Dog meat is eaten throughout the country, revered as a tonic in winter and a restorer of virility in men.

Following the communist seizure of power in 1949, dog ownership was condemned as a bourgeois affectation and canines were hunted as pests. Attitudes have softened in recent years, although urban Chinese are still subject to strict rules on the size of their pets and must pay steep registration fees.

About 70 percent of rural households now keep dogs, according to the Chinese Center of Disease Control and Prevention, and increased rates of dog ownership have been tied to a surge in the number of rabies cases in recent years. It said there were 2,651 reported deaths from the disease in 2004, the last year for which data was available.

Access to rabies treatment is also highly limited, especially in the countryside, said Dr. Francette Dusan, a World Health Organization expert.

Effective rabies control requires coordinated efforts between human health, animal health and municipal agencies and authorities, Dusan said.

“This has not been pursued adequately to date in China, with most control efforts consisting of purely reactive dog culls,” she said.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14139027/

[hubris007]

Look on the bright side. They're due to start their Genetal Herpes campaign soon.

[Wilafur]

repost X infinity

[RevHtree]

That is so sick! How cruel and sad.

[KafudaFish]

Wow that is crappy. I would have a hard time killing my 3 dogs for $1.89. I don't have much else to say since it would just be deleted and I would get a time out from the mods.

[don954]

Don't be too shocked if we hear of a plague or 2 popping up from this, all those fleas and ticks are now looking for new hosts...

[ShellBell]

[FMarini]

while i think what they did was cruel and inhuman.
The united states aren't any better. Granted we don't beat our dogs to kill them, but most major city euthanize more dogs/yr than the 50,000 they mentioned above.
As of last yr, the estimate was 16,438 to 21,917 dogs euthanized each DAY in the US.

[KEstep]

Originally posted by FMarini
while i think what they did was cruel and inhuman.
The united states aren't any better. Granted we don't beat our dogs to kill them, but most major city euthanize more dogs/yr than the 50,000 they mentioned above.
As of last yr, the estimate was 16,438 to 21,917 dogs euthanized each DAY in the US.

Key work here, euthanized, not beaten to death in front of owners.

[hubris007]

Inhumane? I'm sure after about a thousand or so you can off them with one hit. That's faster than most euthanasia techniques and they don't even feel a needle poke.

[sugartooth]

There's a thing called vaccines. They should try using that.
I was very upset when I heard about this and expressed this to my dad. (lived in China)
Unfortunately they don't really care. I was wondering why PETA wasn't there starting fires, etc. I think they are too smart to start stuff with goverment that thinks people are just as expendable as those poor dogs.

[hubris007]

Am i alone in the thinking that anything that has anything to do with PETA immediately loses about 90% of its credibility? It's not that they're always wrong, just way too extreme in their methods. There's a reason they're listed as a terrorist organization.

[sugartooth]

I agree with hubris007!!! I initially thought they were hardcore enough to do something drasatic about the above topic, but I guess they know not to go where they won't win and probably get hurt themselves.
It seems at least in the U.S. they are somewhat protected.

[dc]

Originally posted by hubris007
Am i alone in the thinking that anything that has anything to do with PETA immediately loses about 90% of its credibility? It's not that they're always wrong, just way too extreme in their methods. There's a reason they're listed as a terrorist organization.

That's a little low percentage for me!

I'm just glad I don't have to actually see this happening.

[mike4271]

Originally posted by FMarini
while i think what they did was cruel and inhuman.
The united states aren't any better. Granted we don't beat our dogs to kill them, but most major city euthanize more dogs/yr than the 50,000 they mentioned above.
As of last yr, the estimate was 16,438 to 21,917 dogs euthanized each DAY in the US.

I can't disagree with that, but we have to ask ourselves why, people with pets that won't have them spayed or neutered, puppy mills churning out thousands of animals purely for financial reasons with no thought for the animals, genetic engineering of dogs to suit there owners who don't want a pet, more a fashion accessory. Ever wonder where all the others go that where not "Perfect" in those peoples eyes.


Worldwide problem, not just China, the majority of people don't give a dogs doodoo. Rant over.

[RockTheCasbah!]

While it may sound cruel (and I certainly don't condone it). China's culture & value of life is different than ours here. There is much cruelty going on in the world around us, not only to dogs. We don't often hear of sexual predators abducting, molesting and murdering children in China, yet here it happens all the time. We shouldn't be casting stones if we can't even fix our own problems.

In this country we think of dogs as our buddies, and some even think of them as their "children". In some parts of China, people eat dogs and cats and bugs too. (I know, I've been there-not something I would wanna eat, but it is a different culture)
In the US, there are still women who like to wear fur coats. Do you know how Chinchillas and Minks are murdered for that purpose? They are electrocuted! Oh, and what about the baby seals? Cattle and hogs take an air powered hammer to the head for our consumption.

Let's face it, our entire world (including the US) is not a very good place for animals.