Better not be a dog in China!

Another extermination wave announced in Jining

After 50.000 dogs were clubbed, electrocuted and buried alive in Mouding (a county in Yunnan province), a second extermination wave is now announced in Jining, the capital of Shandong province and home to 500.000 dogs.

National and international outrage about the bloodbath does not impress officials.... For them it's easier to make animals pay for the failures of official vaccination and monitoring campaigns instead of finding more promising ways to tackle the threat of animal diseases.

This brutal campaign does not really come as a surprise considering that every year up to 10 million dogs are slaughtered in that country for meat and skins. The killing methods are infernal and difficult to comprehend (below).

Chinese animal welfare organisations are doing their best to stem the flood of blood. These courageous people deserve great respect and all the help they can get.

======================================
Two extremely cruel examples demonstrate what Chinese animal friends are up against:

1. Excerpt from a 'Sirius' Text: 'Peixiun butchers 300,000 dogs a year, half for local consumption and half for export to other parts of China and both Koreas.

Trussed dogs, their jaws tied shut and some with their forepaws tied behind their backs presumably to make them easier to handle, are a common site. The locals deny that the dogs are tortured before slaughter to infuse their muscles with tenderizing adrenaline, as animal rights activists charge is the case elsewhere in China. But the slaughter isn't something someone of weak constitution would want to see.

In a small village of brick-walled courtyards not far from Mr. Han's farm, Wang Junhua showed a visitor where he slaughters and skins as many as twenty dogs at a time: a series of bloody puddles beneath a cross beam affixed to a line of weeping willow trees. Mr. Wang first cuts the dogs throats and bleeds them before hooking them through the lower jaw and hanging them from the crossbeam. Then he guts them and skins them, he explained, gesturing with a cheerful matter-of-factness.

The whole operation is done in just a few minutes to keep the meat fresh. Whether or not the dogs are still alive when skinned is a matter of debate.

"A dog's life force is very strong," says An Jianshe, Dawn Fine Bred's sales manager. "Even after its been hanging for a while, if you let it down sometimes it will come alive."

2. Another report from Xi Chang Market: "The one man technique was to hit the dog twice on the head with a wooden plank which dazed it sufficiently to make it safe for him to plunge his knife into its jugular without getting bitten. He then held the dog up by the tail until it bled into unconsciousness - he would then proceed to butcher it with the dog coming in and out of consciousness. With the two man technique, one man held the dog up by her tail while the other pulled the neck back with a wire round the dog's neck. The first man was then able to reach down, again without fear of being bitten, to sever the jugular vein. Since the dog was in no way stunned, she struggled and howled and urinated until passing out. The watching dogs were also shaking and howling. The dog was flung onto her back and the butchering began - consciousness returned on lying flat but she was too weak then to struggle much.'

==============
Animals are my friends... and I don't eat my friends.
~George Bernard Shaw
A Chinese Outcry: Doesn’t a Dog Have Rights?



more information:
-According to Chinese tradition, dogs have three reasons to exist: to hunt other animals, to guard homes and to be served as food.

-Yunnan dog massacre

Source: China rabies outbreak triggers second dog cull
Author: EVANA/press

Link: CHINA PREPARES FOR 2008 OLYMPICS
Link: China's animal welfare groups have called for end to dog eating
Link: Protest
Link: Two relatively concentrated dog meat consumption areas in China are in the northeast, south and southwestern areas
Link: Xi Chang Market and pictures - dogs' lives and deaths in China


Other EVANA-articles about this topic:
China's animal welfare groups call for end to dog and cat eating (en)

Animal Welfare Law in China: Are we there yet? (en)