From Animals Asia Foundation
Published with permission
The development of a draft animal protection law is a unique opportunity to develop legislation to provide (at the very least) basic protection for animals across China and one which Animals Asia wishes to embrace for the benefit of all animals across the country.
The Chinese and international media are currently highlighting the possibility of the law including a ban on the consumption of dogs and cats within China. The current draft legislation allows individual provinces to ban the slaughter of dogs and cats within their own jurisdiction.
After many years of campaigning for an end to this barbaric practice we are delighted that this issue is now being openly discussed within China.
As with many issues this debate is polarized. Many people in China feel that the government should not protect one species of animal over another species; others feel that people should be provided with greater protection before animals, and an increasingly large section of society support moves to ban acts of animal cruelty such as the eating of dogs and cats.
Through our Friends or Food programme our team in China has generated immense support for an end to the consumption of dogs and cats. We will continue to support such a ban and contribute to this debate through the media, by providing information with regards the inability of raising such large numbers of dogs and cats in a humane manner to support the demand, the health myths associated with dog and cat meat consumption, the health risks of consuming such diseased animals and the immense cruelty suffered in raising, transporting and slaughtering dogs and cats.
The development of animal protection legislation within China still has a long way to go and it may take many years before such legislation is accepted into Chinese law.
The debate is taking place within China and Animals Asia will continue to call for measures to provide protection for all animals as well as ban the immensely cruel practices such as farming bears for their bile and the killing and eating of dogs and cats for food.
For more comprehensive details on the development of this legislation please click here:
Animals Asia Foundation
For more comprehensive details about the consumption of dogs and cats in Asia, please listen to "Tails of Asia" at WFL Endangered Stream Live.
These are perhaps the cruelest experiments we have ever uncovered, these dogs must have been in almost unimaginable agony. Worse still, these animals suffered and died in vain, there are ways of conducting this research without animals, and dogs are simply a bad research model for human beings."
