Animal lovers save dogs from chop
By Lu Feiran |
April 17, 2011, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
AFTER about 15 hours of negotiation, 520 dogs were saved early yesterday in Beijing after animal lovers paid 115,000 yuan (US$16,420) to buy the dogs from vendor, Beijing Evening News reported yesterday.
The canines were thus saved the chop and avoided ending up on restaurant tables.
The dogs were being transported in a truck from central China's Henan Province to northeast Jilin Province yesterday. The truck was held up on the highway after volunteers learnt about it and the rescued dogs were later sent to a stray animals care center in Beijing.
The newspaper reported that some of them died on the way to Jilin.
An animal lover surnamed An told the newspaper that he and other volunteers came to know about the trip through the Internet. So they waited around 11am on the highway on Friday for the truck.
"If we didn't intervene, the dogs would have been slaughtered," said An. "What we were thinking was that we should save their lives."
The truck had an iron cage that was 2 meters high. It was divided into four layers with each layer of the cage crammed with more than 100 dogs. Most of them were street dogs but there were some pet dogs as well, including Siberian huskies and golden retrievers. Some of the pet dogs had the patch of a strap around their neck, the newspaper reported.
As An reported the affair on his microblog, nearly 100 people, including volunteers from several non-governmental organizations, reached the scene in the afternoon with water, medicine and dog food.
They found the animals in pitiable condition with some of them vomiting while few others had lost consciousness due to hot weather.
The truck owner, surnamed Hao, told the newspaper that an abattoir in northeast China had placed an order for the dogs.
"The restaurants there are in desperate need of dogs," he said. "We bought the dogs for 14 yuan per kilogram in Henan. We were expecting to earn about 10,000 yuan or more through the deal."
Hao said he had no idea that the truck would be held up.
Although volunteers called the police, they could not do much as the truck owner had both transport and animal quarantine certificate.
Volunteers questioned the authenticity of the certificates, but Beijing animal supervision authorities however confirmed that Hao's certificate was legal and valid, according to the newspaper.
It was then that the volunteers decided to buy all the dogs to solve the problem.
The Shangshan Animal Charity Foundation under the China Charity Federation and the Shangshan Foundation and Leepet Corporation, a chain store for pets, shelled out 115,000 yuan for the dogs at 3am.
The miserable experiences of the dogs have raised concerns among China's animal welfare workers and animal lovers with posts related to the incident being forwarded several thousand times on Weibo, China's equivalent to twitter.
They are calling on legislation on animal welfare which currently does not exist in the country and they hope the new law could help curb the abuse of animals and better protect their rights.
The canines were thus saved the chop and avoided ending up on restaurant tables.
The dogs were being transported in a truck from central China's Henan Province to northeast Jilin Province yesterday. The truck was held up on the highway after volunteers learnt about it and the rescued dogs were later sent to a stray animals care center in Beijing.
The newspaper reported that some of them died on the way to Jilin.
An animal lover surnamed An told the newspaper that he and other volunteers came to know about the trip through the Internet. So they waited around 11am on the highway on Friday for the truck.
"If we didn't intervene, the dogs would have been slaughtered," said An. "What we were thinking was that we should save their lives."
The truck had an iron cage that was 2 meters high. It was divided into four layers with each layer of the cage crammed with more than 100 dogs. Most of them were street dogs but there were some pet dogs as well, including Siberian huskies and golden retrievers. Some of the pet dogs had the patch of a strap around their neck, the newspaper reported.
As An reported the affair on his microblog, nearly 100 people, including volunteers from several non-governmental organizations, reached the scene in the afternoon with water, medicine and dog food.
They found the animals in pitiable condition with some of them vomiting while few others had lost consciousness due to hot weather.
The truck owner, surnamed Hao, told the newspaper that an abattoir in northeast China had placed an order for the dogs.
"The restaurants there are in desperate need of dogs," he said. "We bought the dogs for 14 yuan per kilogram in Henan. We were expecting to earn about 10,000 yuan or more through the deal."
Hao said he had no idea that the truck would be held up.
Although volunteers called the police, they could not do much as the truck owner had both transport and animal quarantine certificate.
Volunteers questioned the authenticity of the certificates, but Beijing animal supervision authorities however confirmed that Hao's certificate was legal and valid, according to the newspaper.
It was then that the volunteers decided to buy all the dogs to solve the problem.
The Shangshan Animal Charity Foundation under the China Charity Federation and the Shangshan Foundation and Leepet Corporation, a chain store for pets, shelled out 115,000 yuan for the dogs at 3am.
The miserable experiences of the dogs have raised concerns among China's animal welfare workers and animal lovers with posts related to the incident being forwarded several thousand times on Weibo, China's equivalent to twitter.
They are calling on legislation on animal welfare which currently does not exist in the country and they hope the new law could help curb the abuse of animals and better protect their rights.
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