After Dog Rescues, Chinese Activists Left With a Daunting Task
Every morning since late August, Li Wei has started her day by putting on rubber boots and wading through a barrel of disinfectant before entering a shed filled with dozens of dogs that would have wound up on restaurant tables were it not for rescuers like herself. She and other volunteers in Lucun, a village on the southwestern outskirts of Beijing, then get to the day’s chores: feeding the dogs, filling their water bowls, washing the floor and helping veterinarians administer rabies shots. When the sickest animals die, the volunteers carry the bodies out for burial. They can’t afford cremation, Ms. Li said.
They repeat the same tasks in two other sheds, also full of dogs the authorities seized from traffickers, on a farm the volunteers have turned into a makeshift shelter. Late at night, Ms. Li updates reports on their work on social media platforms such as Sina Weibo, hoping to secure attention and, thereby, funding and adoptions.
“Donations are coming in slowly,” said Ms. Li, managing director ofCapital Animal Welfare Association, a volunteer organization. “Too many dogs since August, and adoptions are hard to arrange.”
Weeks after a string of dramatic rescues of trafficked dogs across northern China, the result of citizen vigilantes responding to tip-offs and intercepting trucks, rescuers such as Ms. Li are struggling with the consequences of their victories against the dog meat industry.
Each year, millions of dogs are slaughtered for their meat in China, according to Animals Asia Foundation, a Hong Kong-based nonprofit organization. The cooler months are the prime season for eating dog meat in some parts of China, where people who eat dogs believe the meat improves circulation and has warming properties.
Of the dogs that are slaughtered, many are raised expressly for food, but animal welfare groups suspect others are stolen. Since last year, the Chinese government has required dog traders to have each animal vaccinated before transporting it. This has cut deeply into profits, because it can cost up to 500 renminbi, about $80, to clear a dog for travel. Traffickers can reduce costs by stealing pets and ignoring the vaccination requirement.
In the citizen interventions in August, the police were called in and some 4,000 dogs were seized in at least four cases in which traffickers were found to lack the mandatory health certificates, according to a report by China Central Television, the state broadcaster.
But once the dogs were seized, there was no legal provision for dealing with them. Organizations such as the Capital Animal Welfare Association stepped forward to take responsibility for the animals, but it has proven to be a daunting task.
The association took in about 160 dogs seized on Aug. 23 on a highway in northern Beijing. Many of the dogs were sick, from starvation and illness, and it quickly became clear they were not suitable for adoption, said the group’s president, Qin Xiaona. “We were optimistic, but now we’re stuck with the dogs,” Ms. Qin said.
So far, more than 60 of the dogs taken in have died of their ailments. But for now, the rescuers say, euthanasia is not an option. Ms. Qin’s group sees that as a public relations minefield in China.
“Animal protectionists fear euthanasia could give the opponents, i.e., dog meat traders and people supporting dog eating, a handle to attack them,” said Peter Li, China specialist for the Humane Society International, a nonprofit organization based in the United States. “It is a tough decision, a risky one.”
Meanwhile, the bills keep mounting. Capital Animal Welfare Association has raised less than 200,000 renminbi to care for the dogs, and still owes about 30,000 renminbi to pharmacists, Ms. Li said. The association has also not paid the animal hospitals, some of the veterinarians or the farmer who lets the volunteers use his yard, Ms. Qin said.
Some 500 miles to the south, in the coastal city of Yantai, another group of animal welfare advocates was handed 850 dogs it had helped the authorities seize on Aug. 11.
“We’ve never handled this many dogs before,” said Wang Chunhong, director of Yantai Headquarters for Stray Animals Aid. “But the police seemed to think we had enough volunteers and shelter space.”
Nearly half of those dogs have died from distemper since her organization took them in, Ms. Wang said.
The predicament of these two animal welfare groups reflects a pattern in China of civil society organizations responding swiftly and with compassion to an emergency — employing social media and mobile phones to track down and intercept traffickers — but lacking the means to follow through.
Another animal welfare group, China Small Animal Protection Association, was sued by 10 animal hospitals in Beijing after itrescued about 500 dogs seized in 2011, but then was unable to pay the resulting medical bills. A Beijing court ordered the group to pay 480,000 renminbi to the hospitals, according to Chinese news reports.
“Resources should not be wasted on sick animals” — which is most of them “given they come from untraceable or even illicit sources,” said Liu Lang, president of the Beijing Small Animal Veterinary Association. “Those that can’t be adopted must be put down.”
But Mr. Liu and others said the larger problem was government inaction. “The authorities don’t want the mess, so they leave it to a bunch of citizens who are caring but incapable,” he said.
An Xiang, founder and president of Beijing Dexiang Law Firm who advises the government on animal control enforcement, agreed: “Government officials are neglecting their duty if they find themselves responding to calls of citizen vigilantes rather than making seizures on their own.”
The Beijing Public Security Bureau and the Beijing Agriculture Bureau, local government agencies charged with animal control, did not respond to requests for comment.
Still, animal welfare advocates see signs of improvement. In the 2011 interception in Beijing, which took place before the Agriculture Ministry imposed the vaccination rule, the police said they lacked the legal grounds to seize the dogs, so the activists ended up paying the traders 115,000 renminbi to free them. Last month, by contrast, all the dogs intercepted were confiscated by the police under the new rule. None of the dog traders was compensated.
“The animal rescuers know they now have a law they can use. That’s progress,” said Chen Minjie, Animals Asia’s China cat and dog welfare manager.
That achievement was celebrated in a Sina Weibo post by Capital Animal Welfare Association after the seizure in Beijing last month:
“We won!” it announced. “The traffickers are signing an agreement to surrender the dogs. And we paid them nothing!”
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