Chinese county massacres 50,000 dogs By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press Writer Tue Aug 1, 6:26 AM ET SHANGHAI, China - A county in southwestern China has killed as many as 50,000 dogs in a government campaign ordered after three people died from rabies, official media reported Tuesday. The five-day massacre in Yunnan province's Mouding county spared only military guard dogs and police canine units, the Shanghai Daily reported, citing local media. Dogs being walked were taken from their owners and beaten on the spot, the newspaper said. Other killing teams entered villages at night, creating noise to get dogs barking, then honing in and beating them to death. Owners were offered 63 cents per animal to kill their dogs before the teams were sent in, the report said. The massacre was widely discussed on the Internet, with both legal scholars and animal rights activists criticizing it as crude and cold-blooded. The World Health Organization said more emphasis needed to be placed on prevention. "Wiping out the dogs shows these government officials didn't do their jobs right in protecting people from rabies in the first place," Legal Daily, a newspaper run by the central government's Politics and Law Committee, said in an editorial in its online edition. Dr. Francette Dusan, a WHO expert on diseases passed from animals to people, said effective rabies control required coordinated efforts between human and animal health agencies and authorities. "This has not been pursued adequately to date in China with most control efforts consisting of purely reactive dog culls," Dusan said. The Shanghai Daily said 360 of Mouding county's 200,000 residents suffered dog bites this year. The three rabies victims included a 4-year-old girl, the report said. "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. Calls to county government offices rang unanswered on Tuesday. China has seen a major rise in the number of rabies cases in recent years, with 2,651 reported deaths from the disease in 2004, the last year for which data was available, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Experts have tied the rise in part to an increase in dog ownership, particularly in rural areas where about 70 percent of households keep dogs. Only about 3 percent of Chinese dogs are vaccinated against rabies, according to the center. Access to appropriate treatment is highly limited, especially in the countryside. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060801...Qq8rSUB0elvaA8F;_ylu=X3oDMTA0cDJlYmhvBHNlYwM-
what gets me is that they just get any dog and just beat it to death... Well cheaper than using bullets...
really heartbreaking. How can they just snatch any dog and kill it T_T. BUt i guess its the only choice in this case, but i hope they find a better way of controlling the epidemic.
dogs vs chickens is un equal? HK did same for flu scare.. then forgot 2 buried or otherwise dispose of carcasses.. dogs, rats ate the dead chickens.
omg that is so messed up. just beat them to death? that is animal cruelty. the chinese government have always been cruel to their own ppl and animals. i would understand if it was like way back when china was poor as hell. but now china is no longer THAT poor. the government could afford to spend a lil money to make it more humane. this just shows how inhumane chinese ppl are and how corrupted the china government is. how can they just barge into ppl's homes and kill their dogs? remember the tianmen incident, this is why foreigners look down on us chinese.
^ remember china doesnt see the dogs the way say westerners do. dogs are only just starting to be seen as "pets". So yeh in a country like china, beating the dogs would be the cheapest way to do it, and since they dont have the same ethics towards dogs other nations do, it is totally acceptable by them tbh it doesnt show how corrupt china is, no one paid a corrupt official to kill those dogs (at least to my knowledge). In my view this does not compare to the tianem incident at all. 2 completely different situations.
well the way i connected it is how it affects the way westerners see china after this incident. they see them as cruel ppl just like like the tianem incident. ohh and the corrupt government part i got that when i went to china a few years back, nothing to do with the article. my uncle told me you have to buy your way or something with the government to do certain things that are normally unaccepted without paying off the officials.
^ yeh china is very corrupt at the moment. but i guess what im trying to say is you have to look at this in context, for people like me or you it will look very wrong and evil but in china, its the way things are done, animals have no rights
they should just chop the head off to make a painless death. why beat them? beat them after they're dead to make the meat tender and ready to eat.
no that's really sad. At least, this will prevent more people getting rabies. They killed those dogs for good cause. However, still sad.
dont you get rabies only if a dog bites you? that and treatments can be given to the dogs themselves? I would kick the peoples asses that tries to beat my dog in front of me.
^ yeh they are trying to stop rabies from spreading from dog bites and to other dogs. There are vaccines but whos gonna pay for them? too messy and long, imagine having to hack off a dogs head then clean up the mess... they are going for the simplest and easiest method for them, they dont think about the dog
No offence, but that's fucking bullshit. While Westerners (e.g. Americans) bitch about Chinese about the containment of rabies, they fail to notice the "1.2 billion+ great tasting meals" KFC puts forward annually. Now, don't all those chickens also deserve some "humane" treatment? (Emphasis is mine) And this has nothing something to do with Tiananmen, how? LMAO! In case you didn't know, 35% of South Korean (yes, SOUTH) who are dog owners actually eat dog meat. Now, isn't that just cruel, and no, I'm not pulling this outta my ass, so if you want a source, I'll get you it. Foreign devils look down on Chinese lol, fuck that, like we care. -rockon
I am a dog lover and I dont think they did anything wrong. Why kill them If they want to kill my dog I think I am going to kill them too. Stupid goverment what they thinking killing all the poor dog for what.
