Filed under: SALDF | Tags: China, dog cull, International Fund for Animal Welfare, police gangs, Qinhuangdao
Officials Hope China Dog Cull Averted
By Margo Ann Sullivan
September 22, 2009
NEW YORK — With each passing day, hope is rising that the September dog cull in Qinhuangdao, China has been called off, saving thousands of animals from being hunted down and bludgeoned by club-wielding police gangs, animal welfare activists say.
In this file photo, four dogs lie dead in an unknown town where Chinese officials culled stray and illegally owned dogs. (ZT Pet News Photo Courtesy: International Fund for Animal Welfare)
Witnesses to past culls have described heart-breaking scenes of suffering, as dogs, with broken legs and backs, struggled to escape only to be killed, sometimes while their owners watched.
“These are not our regular policemen,” said Grace Ge Gabriel, Asia regional director, for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “They’re unemployed people drafted off the streets and armed with bats or large sticks.”
Fear another dog cull was imminent spread earlier this month when the Chinese city officials, citing “some dog-biting incidents,” ordered pet owners to destroy unregistered and unvaccinated dogs, said Colleen Cullen, International Fund for Animal Welfare communications program director.
The deadline to avoid police seizure and a fine was Sept. 10. Cullen said IFAW’s China office suspected the real reason may have been to rid the streets of strays before China’s 60th national anniversary celebration Oct. 1.
But seemingly overnight, notices about this cull disappeared, according to Cullen and Gabriel.
It’s still too soon to say the danger is over, Gabriel said, but so far, the deadline has passed without any sign of police gangs combing the streets for strays and unregistered pets, her sources inside China are saying. Qinhuangdao, the main port city the Hebei Province, is a city of 2.7 million people on the Yellow Sea, 186 miles east of Beijing.
She could not say if the authorities bowed to public pressure.
“The public outcry is definitely there,” she said, as people in China reacted with outrage at the end of May through early June, when police in Hanzhong, a city in western China clubbed some 40,000 dogs to death purportedly to stamp out a possible rabies outbreak. Media scrutiny helped stir emotions and built popular support for a law someday against animal cruelty, she said.
But ignorance about humane methods of handling dog overpopulation and about rabies has kept the culls going, she said. The cull in May was a classic example.
“That area was historically a rabies zone,” she said, “so you would think officials would have prepared.” But, in reality, the local officials didn’t know about effective methods of controlling dog overpopulation and they didn’t think to stockpile vaccines.
“From the local angle, there’s a lot of ignorance,” Gabriel said, both among average people and the officials. “A lot don’t even know you can control rabies by vaccination.”
The fact people who have been exposed to rabies can be cured if the treatment starts immediately is also not widely known, she said. In this case, the officials “didn’t have enough dog vaccine on hand, and there was human vaccine at all,” she said, leading to the cull as a solution.
There’s been public condemnation inside China against the culls, Gabriel said.
The culls are organized by local Chinese police departments, typically with the stated purpose of curbing the spread of rabies or removing dangerous dogs from the streets. But experts like Peter Costa, spokesman for the Global Alliance for Rabies Control, say culls do not work.
“The Alliance for Rabies Control’s stance on depopulation is that it is simply ineffective,” Costa says because “animals culled are quickly replaced by new animals.”
The best ways to stamp out rabies combine education, he said, with “appropriate post-exposure treatment for humans” and vaccination of animals.
Animal protection advocates like Peter Li, a China specialist with Humane Society International, also say culls are doomed to failure and are inhumane. Li, a University of Houston associate professor of East Asian politics, said the proven way to stop rabies is to start aggressive programs to register, vaccinate and sterilize dogs.
Some local police departments are receptive to new ideas, according to Li, who just returned from a China trip where he spent two days conferring with police in Nanjing, a city of six million people and 90,000 registered pets.
“This police department has adopted new ideas transferred from the Hong Kong Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and Humane Society International,” he said.
The Nanjing police department now has a dog shelter and has not resorted to culls for the last two years. Animals, of course, sometimes do have to be destroyed, Li said, but the Nanjing police now use humane ways to collect the dogs and destroy them.
“The police have not beaten any dog to death on the street for the last two years,” Li said. This type of collaboration between local police and animal protection agencies is the model which should be introduced all across China, he said.
But that hasn’t happened yet. Some small dog culls in isolated areas are not even being reported, he said.
Culls have occasionally been averted, Gabriel said. If the September cull, in fact, is averted, this would be the second cull stopped in the past six months.
Last April, for example, animal protection advocates, working with the China Daily newspaper and Chinese legal experts, successfully headed off a northern China cull ordered because a dog bit an official.
“He was so outraged, he issued an order to kill all dogs,” she said. The legal experts used personal property protections in the Chinese Constitution to argue the owners rights were being violated,” Gabriel said. “In the past, winning these cases has been hard because China has no animal protection law. Scholars and international animal rights groups have been working on a law for the past 10 years.”
The effort has picked up steam over the past five or six years, and a draft is nearly ready. But meanwhile, when culls are discovered, there is no way to prosecute animal cruelty.
Li, who is also helping with the legal effort, believes an animal protection law is necessary, so “these heart-wrenching dog culls could be made history,” he said.
Gabriel, who grew up in China but now lives in the United States, personally witnessed a dog being killed in a 2000 cull.
“At the time, these things were still being done in Beijing,” she said. “I was living on the 18th floor, and I heard this dog barking. I looked down and saw a Pekinese being chased in the parking lot. It was able to hide under the cars, but the police were going after it with sticks and the dog was screaming and barking.”
She tried to save the dog but was too late.
“I ran down the stairs,” she said. “They had already somehow got the dog out and killed it.” The police left the dead dog on the street.
“I didn’t see the owner,” she said. “But I know this dog had an owner. Its fur was clean and white. Sometimes, these things are done right in front of the owner.”
The September kill order, Gabriel explained, implicitly includes dogs which the government has banned because they are over 35 cm (about 14-inches) or belong to so-called “dangerous” breeds. Legally, they cannot be registered, she said. And many house pets are also at risk because their owners could not afford the registration fee, Gabriel said.
In 2004, after efforts from international animal advocates, Beijing cut the first-year dog registration fee down to about $200 U.S. dollars.
It had stood at $600 U.S. dollars, which was more than some families earned in a year, she said.
She suggests people who want to help stop the dog culls in China should write to the World Organisation for Animal Health in Paris and the Chinese Ministry of Health and Agriculture.
To voice your opinion, contact:
World Health Organization:Avenue Appia 20, 1211 Geneva 27, Switzerland
The World Organisation for Animal Health: 12, rue de Prony, 75017 Paris, France
Ministry of Agriculture of The People’s Republic of China:No. 11 Nongzhanguan Nanli, Chaoyang District, Beijing 100125 PRC
Animal Protection Groups
International Fund for Animal Welfare: 290 Summer Street, Yarmouth Port, MA 02675, info@ifaw.org
World Society for the Protection of Animals: 89 South Street, Suite 201, Boston, MA 02111
Humane Society International: 2100 L Street, NW, Washington, DC 20037
Filed under: SALDF | Tags: China, dog cull, good news, International Fund for Animal Welfare, Qinhuangdao
Great News! Dog Cull in Qinhuangdao, China Averted
Thanks to the immediate response of our supporters, the dog cull in Qinhuangdao has been averted.
Details are still coming in – but it’s clear that the government in Qinhuangdao felt the pressure from IFAW supporters around the world. Public notices and government web site postings announcing the cull have been taken down.
We will be keeping a close eye on Qinhuangdao and other areas in China until we are convinced that no dogs will be harmed in the future.
Your donation is critical to ending dog culls once and for all
Filed under: SALDF | Tags: China, Give So They Stay drive, Lun Lun, Mei Lan, pandas, Xi Lan, Yang Yang, Zoo Atlanta
Giant pandas birthday bash set for Saturday
Zoo Atlanta works to raise cash to keep exhibit in Atlanta as Mei Lan’s exit nears
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Zoo Atlanta’s birthday bash for its four giant pandas on Saturday promises to be a joyous occasion, filled with good wishes from their adoring public and fruit-filled ice blocks from their loyal keepers.
But after the last “ice cake” is devoured by the black-and-white honorees, it won’t be back to bamboo-chewing business as usual — at least not for long.
Even as they continue negotiations with Chinese officials to extend their panda loan, Zoo Atlanta leaders have already made clear that adolescent female Mei Lan (translation: Atlanta Beauty) will be departing for China. By mid-February, the 3-year-old Georgia peach will be heading to the homeland of parents Lun Lun and Yang Yang because the Chinese believe her good genes make her a beautiful candidate for motherhood.
In February, Mei Lan will be heading to China because the Chinese believe her good genes make her a beautiful candidate for motherhood.
The exit of the first panda cub born in captivity at Zoo Atlanta will set in motion a series of changes at its snug panda habitat. Kid brother Xi Lan, now 1, will be weaned from his mother in February or March and moved to his own enclosure. That will clear the way for breeding season and a hoped-for third Lun Lun-Yang Yang offspring.
Lun Lun eats a bushel of bamboo. There’s still plenty of green to be raised in the zoo’s Give So They Stay fund-raising drive to extend the panda loan from the Chinese government.
But let’s not get the cart ahead of the, um, bears.
Zoo Atlanta’s 10-year contract with China, at a cost of about $1 million a year, expires at the end of this year. Leaders believe it will take $2.5 million to continue their stay five years, a deal similar to the San Diego Zoo’s. In fact, Zoo Atlanta CEO Dennis Kelly returned just this week from negotiating sessions in China.
The Atlanta zoo had quietly raised $2 million privately before launching a public Give So They Stay drive for the remaining $500,000 in mid-June. But it has raised only $119,457 so far.
Still, officials continue to express confidence that their star attractions will remain in Atlanta. “I am happy with the response from the community,” vice president Marcus E. Margerum said, “and I believe the goal is still achievable.”
Either way, beloved Mei Lan’s handlers are pondering what’s sure to be a difficult departure.
“Of course, we’re all going to miss her a great deal, and her keepers will miss her the most because they work with her every day and know her the best,” said Rebecca Snyder, the zoo’s curator of carnivores.
“They’re happy for her, of course, because they want to see her have cubs, and we’ll all be excited if she becomes a mom and takes good care of her cubs.”
Yang Yang eats a bushel of bamboo. Mei Lan’s kid brother Xi Lan now 1, will be weaned from his mother in February or March and moved to his own enclosure. That will clear the way for breeding season and a hoped-for third Lun Lun-Yang Yang offspring.
Mei Lan will have many things to adjust to at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in southwest China.
One big change will be language. The 20 commands she knows, such as “paw” or “lie down,” will suddenly be spoken in a Sichuan dialect. Bamboo, the panda diet staple, will taste different, too, since the species grown here are different than the ones in the Sichuan province. Though adult pandas live a solitary existence, except when mating, Mei Lan will nonetheless have to get used to the sight, smells and sounds of new peers.
Snyder said Mei Lan, who will be old enough to experience her first estrous cycle but a little young to get pregnant, probably won’t mate during her first year at Chengdu.
“They usually wait until they’re 4½, but it will be really nice for her to be around males and adjusted to that whole thing,” the curator said.
Mei Lan will travel in a metal shipping crate used to bring one of her parents to Atlanta, completing a circle of sorts.
Jet lag won’t be her only travel challenge. Snyder says Lun Lun and Yang Yang had heightened levels of cortisol, a hormone indicative of stress, when they arrived from Chengdu. Plus, they were a little off their feed.
Their cortisol levels quickly returned to normal, as did their appetites soon after, Synder said. “So I expect Mei Lan will be similar, that she will be stressed but will adjust within a month.”
But just to make sure things go smoothly for this treasured cargo, Snyder hopes someone on the Zoo Atlanta staff can accompany the Atlanta Beauty on the journey of her young lifetime.
Pandamonium
11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday. Free with Zoo Atlanta admission. 800 Cherokee Ave. 404-624-9453, zooatlanta.org.
IFAW Reports China Dog Cull Looms, Owners Urged to Kill Pets
BEIJING, Sept. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Media reports from China indicate another citywide dog cull will begin Thursday in a district of Qinhuangdao, Hebei Province near Beijing. Dogs that are not registered and vaccinated will reportedly be killed, along with stray animals. Residents with dogs over one foot in height or with those which are considered to be "dangerous breeds" are being asked to kill their own dogs by September 10(th). If these animals are not killed, police will then form dog-beating squads, combing the district and killing all such dogs. Owners will then be fined for the killing. While authorities are attributing the plan to recent dog-biting incidents in the area, the International Fund for Animal Welfare's (IFAW - www.ifaw.org) Asia Regional Director, Grace Ge Gabriel rebuts, "To pick this time to enforce the dog regulation, it is obvious that Qinhuangdao hopes to 'clean' the streets and put on a good show for China's National Day on October 1(st). But, by inflicting cruelty on animals, the city is doing the exact opposite. Mass killing of dogs is going to generate outrage from people all over the world, damaging China's image of a harmonious society." Currently, China does not have any type of animal welfare law in place, which means that there is no legal recourse against the cruel treatment and killing of animals. "The killing of dogs that have rightful owners is a violation of the basic rights of a Chinese citizen," says Gabriel. "Although China has no law to prevent cruelty to animals, its Constitution calls for the protection of personal property, which includes rightfully owned companion animals." Due to the lack of rabies prevention programs, consistent dog population controls or responsible pet ownership education, city governments often resort to mass killing of dogs as a means to control dog populations and prevent rabies outbreaks. This May, the cull in Hanzhong, Shaanxi Province was responsible for the deaths of over 40,000 dogs. "This brutal killing of dogs further highlights the need for legislation that will ensure the humane treatment of all animals," continues Gabriel. Meanwhile, the central government is working with IFAW and other groups in China to draft national animal welfare legislation which Gabriel says is the only way to ensure the humane treatment of animals for the long-term. "Qinhuangdao must stop the mass slaughter of dogs and attend to the root causes of overpopulation and rabies transmission. Above all else, this includes the need for vaccination and sterilization." "We are of course pleased that the draft of China's first animal welfare legislation is near completion but it we fear it will be too late for the tens of thousands of dogs in Qinhuangdao," concluded Gabriel. About the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) As one of the world's leading animal welfare organizations, IFAW has representation in 16 countries and carries out its animal welfare work in more than 40. IFAW works from its global headquarters in the United States and focuses its campaigns on improving the welfare of wild and domestic animals by reducing the commercial exploitation of animals, protecting wildlife habitats, and assisting animals in distress. IFAW works both on the ground and in the halls of government to safeguard wild and domestic animals and seeks to motivate the public to prevent cruelty to animals and to promote animal welfare and conservation policies that advance the well-being of both animals and people. SOURCE International Fund for Animal Welfare Colleen Cullen, IFAW Headquarters, +1-508-648-3586; ccullen@ifaw.org, or Jeff He, IFAW China, jhe@ifaw.org Source
50,000 monkeys held in Chinese hell farms
By Richard Jones; Nick Owens 26/07/2009
Cowering behind bars in secret breeding farms… these are the monkeys trapped in China’s cruel plan to become the world’s biggest exporter of chimps for scientific tests.
One farm nearing completion will be able to hold 50,000 monkeys – making it the largest in the world.
Thousands of these frightened creatures are heading for the UK, victims of a booming global demand from pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies for animals to use in tests.
Figures released last week reveal that the number of live tests on monkeys in Britain soared by 16 per cent to 4,598 in the past year.
And yesterday animals rights groups blasted the increasing use of chimps for testing in the UK and called on politicians here to end the cruel trade.
Andrew Tyler, of Animal Aid, said: “Testing on monkeys is a savage, ugly and pointless business. If the public were to see what is happening to these poor monkeys during tests they would be horrified.”
The Sunday Mirror uncovered disturbing images inside the monkey farms after visiting the Conghua area of Guangzhou province in China. Home to more than 40 farms, chimps arrive here from Cambodia and are bred to be sold across the globe.
Obscured by hills and notoriously secretive, the chimp camps are hidden away from the world. But our investigators – posing as businessman looking to help supply monkeys to the UK for testing – were able to get access to some of the farms.
Inside, monkeys were packed tight into cages. Mothers clutched their babies in the sterile prisons awaiting the journey to the labs of Europe, America and the Far East where they will be tortured in the name of science.
Most of the monkeys fetch about £1,000 each. But cruel farm managers spend as little as 20p a day caring for them.
China’s market in exporting chimps – sought after by companies to test on because they are the closest animal to man – is now worth an estimated £150million a year.
Around 90,000 monkeys were used in tests in labs across the world last year, and the vast majority were from Chinese farms.
One farm currently being built by the Guangzhou Blooming Spring Biological Technology Development Co is hidden in the countryside and invisible from any main road.
Cages are concealed in a pink-tiled compound over a kilometre in length and are surrounded by a 12ft guarded wall. On arriving at the farm a supervisor boasted to our investigators: “We have bought that hillside and soon it will be covered in cages. We already have feeding facilities for 50,000.”
In the farm’s laboratory – where scientists test monkeys for diseases petrified chimps, many carrying babies, are locked behind steel doors and let out high-pitched screams as they are tested.
At another camp, the Huazhen Laboratory Center, a manager explained how the UK is now becoming an increasingly important market for Chinese monkey farm owners to crack.
Laboratory manager Mr Huazhen said: “I have already visited animal laboratories at Huntington, Oxford. I have no doubt in my mind China will soon be the most important exporter of monkeys in the world.”
EXPERIMENTS IN BRITAIN IN 2008
Scientists carried out 3.7million experiments on live animals in Britain last year – the highest number for two decades. As well as the 4,598 experiments on monkeys they included:
2.4million on mice
605,000 on fish
355,000 on rats
123,000 on birds
17,000 on rabbits
9,000 on horses and donkeys
360 on cats
Whale Saves Drowning Diver, Pulls Her to Surface
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
A beluga whale saved a drowning diver by hoisting her to the surface, carrying her leg in its mouth.
Terrified Yang Yun thought she was going to die when her legs were paralyzed by crippling cramps in arctic temperatures. Competitors had to sink to the bottom of an aquarium’s 20-foot arctic pool and stay there for as long as possible with the beluga whales at Polar Land in Harbin, north east China.
Click here for more photos of Mila the Whale’s heroic rescue.
But when Yun, 26, tried to head to the surface she struggled to move her legs.
Beluga whale Mila had spotted her difficulties and using her sensitive dolphin-like nose guided Yun safely to the surface.
Dog Nurses, Saves Panda Cubs in China
Thursday, July 16, 2009 
BEIJING — Two red panda cubs abandoned by their mother at birth are thriving at a northern China zoo thanks to milk and loving care from an unlikely surrogate mother — a dog, state media reported on Thursday.
The cubs, born June 25, were abandoned immediately by their mother after giving birth in front of a crowd of visitors at the Taiyuan Zoo in northern China’s Shanxi province, according to Ha Guojiang, a zoo employee quoted by the official Xinhua News Agency
.
“No one knew she was pregnant. Her plump body and bushy hair disguised her protruding belly until the babies were born,” said Ha. “We hurriedly went about to find a wet nurse for them.”
Telephone calls to the Taiyuan zoo rang unanswered on Thursday.
The dog wet nurse, belonging to a farmer from a nearby suburb, was selected from two other candidates that had recently given birth. The dog is now raising the two panda cubs like its own pups, sometimes even refusing to feed its own pup, said Ha, cited by Xinhua.
At 3-weeks-old, the baby cubs have yet to open their eyes and have doubled in length to 20 centimeters (8 inches), Xinhua reported.
Unlike the more well-known, bear-like giant pandas, red pandas resemble raccoons with long bushy tails. There are believed to be fewer than 2,500 adult red pandas in the world.
As Chinese wealth rises, pets take a higher place
By Joseph Chaney
GUANGZHOU, China — Keeping pets has become all the rage among the affluent in China, even though some Chinese still consume dog and cat meat.
Spending on pet food and pet care in China will be worth an estimated $870 million in 2008, according to Euromonitor International, a market research firm. That is up about 15 percent from the $757 million spent in 2007.
“We still eat dog, but not this kind of dog,” Liu Ming, a pet shop salesman said, pointing to a toffee-colored puppy with floppy ears on sale for about 500 yuan, or $70. “We eat much bigger dogs.”
In the days of Mao, pets were considered a bourgeois indulgence. Now the cute dogs sold in pet shops are spared, while homely mutts tend to be sold at live animal markets as the main ingredient in dog meat stew.
“In China, more and more people are raising pets,” Liu said as curious onlookers crowded his stall on a dusty street. “It’s not as difficult as before.”
In Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, a growing class of the nouveau riche even sees pets – particularly dogs – as fashion items, outfitting them in designer clothing, paying for spa treatments and dyeing their fur.
That trend, experts say, is a stark contrast to the tradition of eating everything from silkworms to pangolins, or scaly anteaters.
“In Beijing, there’s a huge market with pitiful dogs waiting in cages to be sold as meat, and literally a few yards away standard poodles dyed in all colors of the rainbow,” said Jill Robinson, chief executive of Animals Asia Foundation, an animal welfare charity based in Hong Kong.
The thriving industry of fake designer goods is even taking on designer doggy-wear. In Guangzhou, hawkers were selling fake Louis Vuitton dog carriers one day as a dog in a faux Louis Vuitton sweater napped nearby on the dusty sidewalk.
There were nearly 11 billion pets in China in 2007, according to Euromonitor International, up from 10.8 billion in 2006. The bulk of the animals were birds, fish and reptiles.
China estimates it has 150 million pet dogs. Statistics are scant on the burgeoning industry because many pets are unregistered. Euromonitor puts that figure at 26.8 million, and says China has 10.7 million pet cats.
Despite the emergence of Western-style pet rearing, dog meat remains a popular winter cuisine in parts of China.
Beijing has more than 120 restaurants serving dog meat, although some may close as the city tries to change its image before the Olympic Games.
Known as “fragrant meat,” dog meat is purported to have medicinal benefits and to improve blood circulation in winter.
The meat, culled from farmed animals that are mixtures of Chinese dogs and St. Bernards or other big breeds, are served stewed, roasted or sliced in a hot pot. Dogs with collars are sometimes seen at live animal markets, according to Animals Asia Foundation, suggesting that runaways sometimes end up on the dinner table.
China’s pet industry is still tiny compared with its counterpart in the United States where owners are projected to spend over $43 billion on their pets this year. But experts say the industry’s potential in China is enormous as incomes rise and more of the country’s childless couples see pets as less needy substitutes for children.
Spending on pet food and pet care is projected to reach $995 million by 2009, up over 100 percent from $463 million in 2004, experts say.
Effem Foods in Beijing, a subsidiary of the U.S. food giant Mars – the owner of the Pedigree and Whiskas brands – claimed 53.8 percent of dog and cat food sales in 2006, Euromonitor said.
Nestlé, the world’s largest food group, is in second place with 17.7 percent, and the U.S. consumer product giant Proctor & Gamble is in third with 1.7 percent.
Nestlé set up a production site in Tianjin in 2007 to be more competitive locally, a move that some analysts suggest may not be wise given a spate of food safety scandals in China. Last year, 800 tons of wheat gluten from China tainted with melamine was sold to U.S. pet-food makers, triggering millions of recalls there and killing over 200 cats and 100 dogs.
Despite popular perceptions that dogs and cats are poorly treated in China, compared with Western countries, both animals have long histories there. Some scientists believe that dogs emerged 15,000 years ago from a group of wolves tamed in China. Since ancient times, cats have been valued for their pest-catching skills.
“The animal markets keep getting smaller and smaller,” Marek Michalski, 43, a Polish trader in Guangzhou, said at a café near a market where live cats are sold as food. “Many Chinese I know say if they buy a cat like that at the market, they’ll set it free.”
AFP reports China is drafting its first law to protect animals from abuse, which could see serious violators end up in jail, state media reported.
The draft, which will be published in August to solicit opinions from the public, covers violations such as abusing and abandoning pets, the English-language Global Times said.
Severe violators could be sent to prison, while lighter punishments would include fines and detention of fewer than 15 days, according to the report. It did not specify the jail terms that might be applied under the law.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5he6CKVW5J4Z-UlLrqJqPfjpAnTLA
One-dog policy in Chinese city forces tough choice
GUANGZHOU, China – Mrs. Chen can’t imagine abandoning one of her two best friends: her scruffy terrier mutt and a white fluffy Pekingese mix with buggy eyes.
But that’s what the government in this southern Chinese city wants the middle-aged housewife to do when a one-dog policy takes effect in Guangzhou.
Beginning July 1, each household can raise only one pooch. The regulation won’t be grandfathered in, so families with two or more dogs will apparently have to decide which one gets to stay.
“It’s a cruel regulation. These dogs are like family. How can you keep one and get rid of the others?” said Chen, who declined to give her full name because she feared the police would track her down and seize the dogs.
Such dog controls have touched off resentment among urban — mostly new middle class — Chinese in other cities. The Guangzhou measure comes as many are worrying about the economy, and there’s potential for the regulation to trigger a public backlash.
Police and city government officials appear to be aware of the issue’s sensitivity. The Associated Press spent three weeks making calls and sending faxes to officials requesting an interview about the policy. But after the requests were passed back and forth between the police and city government, neither agreed to discuss it.
The regulation appears to be part of an effort to control stray dogs in Guangzhou, once known as Canton. An hour north of Hong Kong by train, it is one of the richest cities in China and has a rapidly growing middle class that can afford to own dogs.
Many of the first-time pet owners don’t bother to spay or neuter their animals and are new to the burdens of keeping an animal. The canines often end up on the street when their owners grow tired of raising a cute puppy that grew up into a big mutt and constantly demands care.
Guangzhou is also preparing to host the Asian Games next year, and crews have been scrubbing down and sprucing up the city of 12 million people. Reducing the dog population will likely mean cleaner sidewalks.
People were quick to react to the regulation when it was announced in March, said Mao Mao, who six years ago founded a shelter for stray dogs called Family of the Pet. She said that before March, she would receive only a few calls a month from dog owners who wanted to give up pets.
“Since March, every day we get about 10 calls a day,” said the woman, who takes in only strays and advises pet owners how to find new homes for their animals.
“I’m afraid there are going to be many more stray dogs in July when the one-dog regulation becomes effective,” she said.
Many other Chinese cities, including Beijing, have long had one-dog policies. Officials commonly launch mass roundups of dogs when the canine population is deemed too big or infected with rabies and other diseases. In 2006, Beijing authorities caught 29,000 unregistered dogs in one month — a campaign that sparked public anger and protest.
Worries about rabies prompted authorities in Hanzhong city in the northern province of Shaanxi to order all the dogs in rabies-infected areas killed this month, and more than 34,000 were put to death, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.
Such killing campaigns, and rabies outbreaks, are common in China, with more than 2,000 people dying every year after being bitten by rabid dogs.
During the 2006 Beijing roundup, there were no reports of authorities entering homes to seize dogs. But witnesses accused the police of going through neighborhoods and collecting unregistered dogs from the streets, then beating them to death. In one county in the southwestern province of Yunnan, where three people had died of rabies, authorities killed 50,000 dogs, often clubbing them to death in front of their owners.
Recently, Beijing has been changing its approach to animal control, said Grace Ge Gabriel, Asia regional director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. City officials have been working with the fund and veterinarian associations to organize campaigns to spay and neuter animals, she said.
Getting the dogs fixed is key to controlling the population, she said. Also important is regulating dog breeders and keeping fees for dog tags and vaccines affordable so people will register their animals.
“Beijing realizes there are positive and non-confrontational ways to solve the problem of overpopulation, instead of draconian policies of taking pets away,” she said.
Dog owners in Guangzhou aren’t sure if the one-dog policy will be strictly enforced. Often Chinese authorities announce a tough new law, launch a crackdown, then ignore the measure.
Mrs. Chen, the owner of the Pekingese and terrier mixes, said her plan was to register one of her dogs with her parents. She said the Chinese are masters at finding loopholes and other ways to skirt around laws.
“In China, we have a saying,” she said. “When the people at the top make a policy, the people at the bottom find a way to get around it.”
