(MY) sale of pets

[Guest guest]

2007/09/18-New Straits Times

 

Sale of pets: Dept not doing enough

By : SHOBA MANO, for The Remembering Sheena Campaign, Subang Jaya

 

 

 

Stray dogs rounded up by the Selayang Municipal Council. The

dog-catching competition it organised has been called off.

 

 

I REFER to the letter on the sale of pets in hypermarkets ( " It's not

like selling goods " — (NST, Sept 5).

 

Wong Ee Lyn has accurately outlined how a decent and civilised society

should operate. But I disagree on one proposal, which is to have the

Department of Veterinary Services (DVS) inspect pet retail outlets.

 

I'm afraid the DVS is the main problem in the matter of random sales

of animals because there is no regulation for breeders or pet shops.

So we end up with breeders abusing cats and dogs, confining them to

small cages where they have no life whatsoever.

 

Pet shops don't care where they buy from as long as they make a

profit. These pets often face hip and joint problems by the time they

are 4 years old.

 

There are hardly any court cases initiated by the DVS against those

who abuse animals this way. The public has complained to the

Remembering Sheena Campaign that the DVS doesn't bother to respond to

its reports of animal abuse.

 

On the DVS website, there is nothing on animal welfare except a small

section that cites the Animal Ordinance 1953, an outdated piece of

legislation.

 

After much protest from animal welfare groups, the Animal Act 2006 was

passed, incorporating the old ordinance without any change.

 

Whenever there is a dog attack or some problem with strays, the

Housing and Local Government Ministry gets involved, but the ministry

and the DVS are constantly bickering over jurisdiction and neither

takes proactive steps such as educating the public on animal welfare.

 

The recent fiasco was the dog-catching competition where the Selayang

Municipal Council was prepared to give RM15,000 as first prize.

 

Then there was the incident of a teenager who wrote complaining that

Ipoh City Council officers shot a dog within a school compound, and

used a meat hook to drag it away. The children were traumatised, he

wrote.

 

If this is the precedent set by the authorities on the treatment of

animals, how can Wong Ee Lyn expect the hypermarkets to act any

better?