(CN) 50, 546 dogs killed in Mouding County, Yunnan

[Guest guest]

Three out of 300 dog-bitten people dies of canine

madness in SW China

Xinhua

2006-07-30

 

KUNMING, July 30 (Xinhua) -- Three people, including a

four-year-old girl, were confirmed died of canine

madness during the past ten days, amid more than 300

people bitten by dogs in Mouding County in southwest

China's Yunnan Province, local government said Sunday.

 

 

Li Haibo, spokesman of the Mouding county government,

said that the three died after days of treatment in

hospital. Though they were injected bacterin to treat

the disease immediately after they were bitten by

dogs, initial diagnosis shows rabies, or canine

madness, caused their death.

 

Mouding, with a population of 200,000, kept over

55,000 dogs as pets or house watch. To prevent spread

of the disease from ill dogs to more people, many dogs

in the county have been killed over the past five

days.

 

According to the official, since the end of June,

local government has received reports continuously

that people were bitten by " mad dogs " , and the number

increased sharply in middle and late July, during

which period more than 300 were bitten.

 

Besides, there are still five more being hospitalized.

They were bitten by dogs after July 20. And all those

bitten by dogs have been asked to take anti-rabies

bacterin injections.

 

Experts from the Yunnan provincial center of disease

prevention and control warned that dogs with canine

madness could spread the disease virus to human beings

by biting and clawing.

 

The latent period of the disease is not certain, as

from several days to as long as 20 years, and yet

there is no effective medicine and treatment anti the

disease, according to the experts.

 

Once the disease develops, patients could hardly

survive. However, if people were injected with related

bacterin in time, the incidence of the disease would

drop to 10 percent, the experts said.

 

" With the aim to keep the horrible disease away from

people, we decided to kill the dogs, " Li said, adding

that the disease is now under control.

 

http://news3.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-07/30/content_4896848.htm

---------------------

Town culls dogs after rabies deaths

www.iol.co.za

July 31 2006

 

Beijing - Officials in a rural county of south-western

China's Yunnan province ordered the culling of more

than 50 000 dogs after three people and several farm

animals died of rabies following dog bites, state

media said on Monday.

 

A police-led team recorded 50 546 dogs killed from

July 25 to July 30 and estimated that less than 10 per

cent of the dog population remained in Yunnan's

Mouding county, the semi-official China News Service

and other media reported.

 

Owners were required to kill their dogs or hand them

over to the police teams, receiving compensation of

just five yuan (about R4) for each dog.

 

Some local residents were unhappy that even the 4 292

dogs vaccinated against rabies had to be put down

because officials believed the vaccines were not

100-percent reliable.

 

But police dogs and military guard dogs were exempt

from the culling order, the reports said.

 

Dogs are commonly kept as pets or guards in many rural

areas of China but were banned in cities until

recently.

 

They also remain popular for their meat in many areas

of northern and southern China. - Sapa-dpa

 

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?art_id=qw1154342880209B254

 

 

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[Guest guest]

Isn't there another way in to control the rabies in SW China rather than

killing all

 

these dogs? Are there any animal welfare organizations to help the people

and

 

animals control rabies? and does anyone know how these dogs were killed?

 

Thank you

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

Of course there is. As a matter of fact killing has never been successful

in controlling rabies and never will. New dogs and other animals will move

into this vacant territory till the equilibrium point (at which the food

availability can sustain a dog population) is reached. Mass vaccination is

the only way to control rabies with spay/neuter a method to control fresh

births.

 

The basic rule is: The number of dogs in any area is directly proportional

to the availabilty of food or N = k x A; where N is the number of dogs; A is

the

quantity of food available and k is a constant.

 

Yes - most dogs, from all accounts, were beaten to death. May beat being

skinned

alive (common in China) but not by much.

 

S. Chinny Krishna

 

 

MailPV1 [MailPV1]

Friday, August 04, 2006 5:04 AM

cateanna; aapn

Re: (CN) 50, 546 dogs killed in Mouding County, Yunnan

 

 

 

 

Isn't there another way in to control the rabies in SW China rather than

killing all

 

these dogs? Are there any animal welfare organizations to help the people

and

 

animals control rabies? and does anyone know how these dogs were killed?

 

Thank you

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

I posted the following background yesterday to a public

health discussion board, at request of an official of the World

Health Organization:

 

I have been reporting about animal welfare in China since

September 1970, including as a regular part of my fulltime news beat

since 1992.

 

Of importance in understanding the most recent dog massacre

is understanding the regional and political history of dog-keeping.

Dogs have been eaten in southern and coastal China since circa 1350,

almost entirely in Cantonese-speaking areas, spreading into

Mandarin-speaking areas mainly north of North Korea.

Mandarin-speakers otherwise rarely eat dogs.

 

From 1949 until under 10 years ago, the Communist government

actively discouraged keeping dogs as pets, because of Mao Tse Tung's

view that dogs were parasites. Dog pogroms were common all over China.

 

Post-Mao, however, keeping dogs as pets became so popular,

perhaps because of the one-child family policy leaving vacancies in

homes, that China now has more pet dogs than any other nation, and a

higher rate of keeping dogs as pets than any nations except the U.S.

and Costa Rica (almost twice as high a rate, per household, as

Britain and France.)

 

Unfortunately, access to anti-rabies vaccination and

education about vaccination and good practices in dog-keeping have

not grown with the dog population. Further, many public officials

retain the old anti-dog perspectives of the Mao years.

 

Finally, there is an intense cultural conflict in the

southern part of China, around Guangdong, the hub of both dog-eating

and cat-eating, between the pet-keepers and the dog and cat eaters.

Often local governments are involved in operating huge dog and cat

farms that produce dogs and cats for meat. These animals are not

vaccinated against rabies because of the belief that vaccinated

animals are not safe to eat. The dog and cat meat industries, which

are just a fraction the size of the Chinese pet industry now, but are

politically well-entrenched, feel intensely threatened by the growth

of pro-animal opinion and the likelihood that eventually dog-eating

and cat-eating will be banned. (Polls have shown majority disapproval

of these practices for about eight years now.)

 

Rabies outbreaks serve the interest of the dog and cat meat

industry by giving the local governments a pretext to crack down hard

on pet-keeping.

 

Meanwhile, though this latest dog pogrom involved pets, it

should be noted that several other recent pogroms did involve killing

every dog on farms that had rabies outbreaks. There are many

indications that the Chinese central government in Beijing is

becoming fed up with the problems associated with raising dogs and

cats en masse for slaughter, and may be looking for ways to phase it

out.

 

Among the most telling of these indications are the openness

of exposure and criticism of the most recent massacre--a marked

contrast with how this sort of thing was handled only a few years

ago, when word of dog pogroms reached us only through back-door

channels.

 

Jonathan Watts of the Guardian reported from Beijing yesterday:

 

> 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.

>

> " 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. "

 

The most noteworthy paragraph of Watts' coverage, however,

may have been the final paragraph, where he mentioned that:

 

> 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.

 

If fake vaccines are being produced and distributed on that

kind of scale, in the region where the dog massacre occurred, the

panic response of the local officials to the rabies outbreak is much

more understandable.

 

Finally, Ingrid Newkirk of PETA demonstrated her complete

lack of comprehension of the entire situation by calling for a

boycott of " anything from China. "

 

Considering that this dog pogrom was actually among the

smallest and most regionally limited of hundreds over the past half

century, and that it was immediately denounced throughout China,

including by the central government, this response is thoroughly

inappropriate.

 

Quite to the contrary, now is the time for everyone who is

in a position to do so to engage as actively as possible with China,

to help inform, support, and encourage the fast-growing Chinese

animal welfare movement.

 

Most ironic is that the Mouding dog massacre, proportionate

to the Chinese population of 1.4 billion people, is actually much

smaller in scope than the killing by PETA staff of several dozen

" rescued " dogs and cats last year in small towns in North Carolina,

for which two PETA staff members are soon to be tried on felony

cruelty charges.

 

PETA killed 1,911 of the 2,225 animals it " rescued " in 2003,

the most recent year for which I have the PETA statistics: more than

were killed by 75% of the animal control shelters in Virginia, where

PETA is located, and more than twice the rate of animal control

killing for the U.S. as a whole.

 

 

 

--

Merritt Clifton

Editor, ANIMAL PEOPLE

P.O. Box 960

Clinton, WA 98236

 

Telephone: 360-579-2505

Fax: 360-579-2575

E-mail: anmlpepl

Web: www.animalpeoplenews.org

 

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