China Massacres 50,000 Dogs in Anti-Rabies Campaign

[HAZE]

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/china-massacres-50000-dogs-in-anti/20060801000009990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001

Wow, this is disgusting. These dogs were taken right from their owners and beat to death with sticks.

SHANGHAI, China (Aug. 2) - 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.

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.

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.

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.

Oh well, at least in China, they won't go to waste.

[cookie6]

OMG

That is horrific!

That last picture of their poor little cooked heads is AWFUL!

[hehateme]

I dont get why it is disgusting or horrific????

Just like when bird flu became a pandemic they culled the birds, rabies is becoming a major major problem in china.

[jimk29]

I dont get why it is disgusting or horrific????

Just like when bird flu became a pandemic they culled the birds, rabies is becoming a major major problem in china.

As a dog lover, it's hard to say, but I do see your point... however, beating them to death with sticks? Couldn't they at least think of a more humane way to kill the dogs if it absolutely had to be done?

[fkornre]

I dont get why it is disgusting or horrific????

Just like when bird flu became a pandemic they culled the birds, rabies is becoming a major major problem in china.

dogs are more common as a pet for americans...so they feel this way...

but to beat them to death with sticks??? thats not humane...

[calebdead]

Nothing pisses me off more than animal cruelty. If China had instead beaten to death 50,000 of their own people it would not have bothered me a bit. But to actually go out of their way to viciously beat these dogs to death is pure evil.

How can they justify beating the dogs rather than just shooting them? Beating just takes more time and is alot more messy. If this absolutely had to be done, they cold have simply put one shot in the dogs' head and be done with it. No suffering.

This is why I absolutely hate these fucking chinks. Whenever I hear about some chinese delivery guy on his bicycle getting beaten and robbed, I smile and thank God for doing me a solid.

[Felix_Leiter]

while i think its sad, they really have not taken a liking to dogs as the US has done.

to them, dogs are like birds.

[jimk29]

Nothing pisses me off more than animal cruelty. If China had instead beaten to death 50,000 of their own people it would not have bothered me a bit. But to actually go out of their way to viciously beat these dogs to death is pure evil.

How can they justify beating the dogs rather than just shooting them? Beating just takes more time and is alot more messy. If this absolutely had to be done, they cold have simply put one shot in the dogs' head and be done with it. No suffering.

This is why I absolutely hate these fucking chinks. Whenever I hear about some chinese delivery guy on his bicycle getting beaten and robbed, I smile and thank God for doing me a solid.

People who abuse animals are fucking pussies. It infuriates me to see all this bullshit about people neglecting/abusing their pets.

[HAZE]

People who abuse animals are fucking pussies. It infuriates me to see all this bullshit about people neglecting/abusing their pets.

Oh man, there are a few vids on consumptionjunction of this sick bitch stepping on these cute little puppies with high heels.

I had to turn it off because it was so bad. These people should be killed S L O W L Y

[jimk29]

Oh man, there are a few vids on consumptionjunction of this sick bitch stepping on these cute little puppies with high heels.

I had to turn it off because it was so bad. These people should be killed S L O W L Y

Why would you watch that?

[HAZE]

Why would you watch that?

I was curious how bad it was. I didn't think it would be that bad. It was.

[lolahotass]

Its not as upsetting that they had to kill the dogs... i mean its understandable due to them being rabid.. but HOW they handled it is painful to me.... they could have put them in a gas tent or shot them... anything but beating them with a stick... they suffered... thats not right.

[HAZE]

Its not as upsetting that they had to kill the dogs... i mean its understandable due to them being rabid.. but HOW they handled it is painful to me.... they could have put them in a gas tent or shot them... anything but beating them with a stick... they suffered... thats not right.

They weren't rabid. They did it as a precaution.

[jimk29]

Fucking chinks...

Second mass dog slaughter in China

Friday, August 4, 2006; Posted: 1:09 p.m. EDT (17:09 GMT)

The massacre of dogs in China apparently spared only military guard dogs and police canine units.

SHANGHAI, China (AP) -- For the second time in days, Chinese authorities have ordered a mass slaughter of dogs to curb a rabies outbreak -- drawing criticism from animal lovers but also support from many who say it's the only way to contain a disease that kills more than 2,000 Chinese a year.

Officials in the eastern city of Jining plan to kill all dogs within three miles of areas where rabies has been found, the official Xinhua News Agency said Friday.

The measure came in response to the deaths of 16 people from rabies in Jining in the last eight months, Xinhua said. It didn't say when the slaughter would begin or how the animals would be killed. It said the city had about 500,000 dogs.

Rabies cases are on the rise in China, with 2,651 reported deaths from the disease in 2004, the last year for which data was available. Only 3 percent of the country's dogs are vaccinated against rabies.

Last week, a county in southwestern Yunnan province killed 50,000 dogs, many of them beaten to death in front of their owners, after three people died of rabies.

The slaughters have outraged animal rights groups, who call them cruel and a sign of government incompetence in dealing with rabies, an often fatal disease that attacks the nervous system but which can be warded off with a series of injections.

"I think this is completely insane," said Zhang Luping, founder of the Beijing Human and Animal Environmental Education Center.

"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.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals called such killings a "hideously cruel response," in a statement on its Web site.

After last week's slaughter, the group canceled about $300,000 orders for merchandise made in China and called for a boycott of Chinese-made products to protest what it calls widespread cruelty to animals in the country.

The killings in Yunnan prompted unusually pointed criticism in state media, with many commentators saying it signaled how little capacity the local government had to deal with routine health issues.

Other slaughters have been reported elsewhere in China this year, although the government says it has no standard policy of destroying dogs.

Zhang, the founder of the Beijing education center, said there were no laws under which citizens could stop the killings. However, she said she and other animal protection activists were reaching out through the media to try to change policy.

"I think this brutal and cold-blooded campaign should stop as soon as possible," Zhang said.

People who answered the phone at Jining's city government and the epidemic control center refused to comment or said they weren't authorized to release information to the media.

The World Health Organization has not directly criticized the slaughters, but WHO experts have said they underscore a lack of coordination and other problems within China's health care system.

The killings have also prompted a slew of impassioned postings in online forums.

"Tens of thousands of people die in traffic accidents each year, but we don't ban cars. Dogs are simply easy to persecute," said one unsigned posting on Xinhua's electronic bulletin board.

"People opposed to killing dogs ought to think how they'd feel if they or a relative was infected with rabies. Are people's or dogs' lives more important?" said another, also unsigned.

[lolahotass]

They weren't rabid. They did it as a precaution.

I thought they did it to stop a rabies scare?

[jimk29]

I thought they did it to stop a rabies scare?

To stop the threat of rabies... the dogs were not rabid. Chinese people = teh suck.

[lolahotass]

To stop the threat of rabies... the dogs were not rabid. Chinese people = teh suck.

yeah but dogs aren't pets to them.. so its different.... i just think it sucks that they were beaten to death..

that is teh suck.

[jimk29]

yeah but dogs aren't pets to them.. so its different.... i just think it sucks that they were beaten to death..

that is teh suck.

Animal abuse is animal abuse, whether it's a pet or not.

[elevatedflow]

Rabies only kills 2000 chinese a year ... isnt the rate of suicide higher in these countries!?

[jimk29]

Rabies only kills 2000 chinese a year ... isnt the rate of suicide higher in these countries!?

Seriously, there's 1.5 billion people there... that's not that many.

[HAZE]

yeah but dogs aren't pets to them..

Dogs being walked were seized from their owners and beaten to death on the spot

Sounds like some people have them as pets.

[elevatedflow]

Seriously, there's 1.5 billion people there... that's not that many.

Im going to but dollars to dumplings that there are already more people w/ fouler diseases and shit than dogs with rabies ...

[lolahotass]

Sounds like some people have them as pets.

yeah but i don't think as many as we have here in the states is what i meant....

i agree with jim.. animal abuse sucks period.

[jimk29]

yeah but dogs aren't pets to them.. so its different.... i just think it sucks that they were beaten to death..

that is teh suck.

So much for that argument... stoopid chinks.

"The government says 70 percent of rural households have dogs, but just 3 percent are vaccinated against the disease (rabies)."

Humane Society offers aid for China dogs - Yahoo! News