- Police and public health officials in southern China
have clubbed, hanged or electrocuted almost 50,000 dogs in a week-long
crackdown on rabies, local media reported on Tuesday.
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- Squads in Mouding, Yunnan province, grabbed pets from
their owners while they were out for walks and beat them to death on the
spot, the Shanghai Daily reported.
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- Dog owners were offered a five yuan (75 US cents) reward
for killing their animals. Those who attempted to hide their pets indoors
were flushed out by late-night squads who made loud noises outside to make
the dogs bark.
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- The cull was ordered after the death of three local people,
including a four-year-old girl, from rabies during the last six months.
State media said 360 of Mouding county's 200,000 residents had suffered
dog bites this year. Pigs and cows have also been attacked.
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- Despite the vaccination of 4,000 animals, the number
of dog attacks continued to rise, prompting the cull.
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- "With the aim to keep this horrible disease from
people, we decided to kill the dogs," Li Haibo, a spokesperson, was
quoted as saying by the Xinhua news agency.
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- The slaughter began on July 25. Of the 50,000 dogs in
the county, only army dogs and police dogs were spared.
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- 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", it said.
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- "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, which is published by the central government's
Politics and Law Committee, said in an editorial in its online edition.
The Xinhua agency said, also in an editorial, that the killings would not
have been necessary if the local government had been more attentive, but
called the slaughter "the only way out of a bad situation".
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- In a statement to media, president of the charity People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Ingrid Newkirk, said the group had
cancelled orders of merchandise it sold that was made in China. "We
are urging everyone to actively boycott -- not a word we use lightly --
anything from China given the bludgeoning killing of thousands of dogs"
and examples of cruelty toward animals, she said.
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- Meng Xiaoshe, the editor of the Dog Daily website, described
the cull as barbaric. "Among the dead animals there must be some with
a licence and a vaccination certificate."
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- According to the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and
Prevention, the number of rabies cases in China has risen in recent years,
with 2 651 deaths reported in 2004. The centre's figures suggest it is
a bigger killer than HIV/Aids and hepatitis combined.
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- The rise is partly down to a boom in pet ownership. Many
families keep dogs but only 3% vaccinate their animals.
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- Piracy has also made the problem worse. Last year, two
boys in Guangdong died of rabies, a disease against which their parents
thought they had been inoculated. Police then found 40 000 boxes of fake
vaccine.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2006
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- Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD
- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
- Univ of West Indies
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- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at:
- http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
- Also my new website:
- http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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