Chinese officials face public rebuke for slaughtering dogs

Yet one more reason to NOT BUY anything made in CHINA. EVER!

Chinese officials face public rebuke for slaughtering dogs

CHRISTOPHER BODEEN
IN SHANGHAI

THE slaughter of a reported 50,000 dogs in an anti-rabies crackdown in south-western China provoked unusually pointed criticism in state media yesterday, along with calls for a boycott of Chinese products from the activist group People For the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

Health experts, meanwhile, said the brutal policy underscores deep weaknesses in China's healthcare system, which sees more than 2,000 human deaths from rabies each year.

The five-day massacre in Yunnan province's Mouding county spared only military guard dogs and police canine units.

Click the 'Read More' button below to finish the story.

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

Owners were offered 5 yuan (33p) per animal to kill their own dogs before the teams were sent in, they said.

The slaughter was ordered after about 360 of the county's 200,000 residents suffered dog bites this year, with three people reportedly dying of rabies, including a four-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 the official Xinhua news agency.

Located in mountains about 1,240 miles south-west of Shanghai, Mouding is famed for its numerous Buddhist shrines.

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.

"If they'd discovered this earlier, they could have vaccinated the dogs and ... controlled the outbreak," the editorial said.

Ingrid Newkirk, PETA's president said the group had cancelled all orders of merchandise it sold that was made in China.

"We are urging everyone to actively boycott anything from China, given the bludgeoning killing of thousands of dogs and examples of cruelty toward animals, Ms Newkirk said.

Will Wright, at PETA's European office in London, said the orders were worth about £160,000. "We believe other groups will join us in expressing outrage over the blatant cruelty to animals the world is witnessing," Mr Wright said.

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.

It's really not a long way from killing girl babies is it? Oh, maybe they killed dogs FIRST in their cultural history....and then girl babies. Sick.