The Chinese are at it!

[Teckel]

Rabies Campaign: Chinese Massacres 50,000 Dogs

Chinese County Massacres 50,000 Dogs in Campaign Against Rabies

By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN

The Associated Press

SHANGHAI, China - A county in southwestern China has killed as many as 50,000 dogs in a government campaign ordered after three people died from rabies, official media reported Tuesday.
The five-day massacre in Yunnan province's Mouding county spared only military guard dogs and police canine units, the Shanghai Daily reported, citing local media.

Dogs being walked were taken from their owners and beaten on the spot, the newspaper said. Other killing teams entered villages at night, creating noise to get dogs barking, then honing in and beating them to death.

Owners were offered 63 cents per animal to kill their dogs before the teams were sent in, the report said.

The massacre was widely discussed on the Internet, with both legal scholars and animal rights activists criticizing it as crude and cold-blooded. The World Health Organization said more emphasis needed to be placed on prevention.

"Wiping out the dogs shows these government officials didn't do their jobs right in protecting people from rabies in the first place," Legal Daily, a newspaper run by the central government's Politics and Law Committee, said in an editorial in its online edition.

Dr. Francette Dusan, a WHO expert on diseases passed from animals to people, said effective rabies control required coordinated efforts between human and animal health agencies and authorities.

"This has not been pursued adequately to date in China with most control efforts consisting of purely reactive dog culls," Dusan said.

The Shanghai Daily said 360 of Mouding county's 200,000 residents suffered dog bites this year. The three rabies victims included a 4-year-old girl, the report said.

"With the aim to keep this horrible disease from people, we decided to kill the dogs," Li Haibo, a spokesman for the county government was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua News Agency.

Calls to county government offices rang unanswered on Tuesday.

China has seen a major rise in the number of rabies cases in recent years, with 2,651 reported deaths from the disease in 2004, the last year for which data was available, according to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Experts have tied the rise in part to an increase in dog ownership, particularly in rural areas where about 70 percent of households keep dogs. Only about 3 percent of Chinese dogs are vaccinated against rabies, according to the center. Access to appropriate treatment is highly limited, especially in the countryside.

[KennelMom]

They are supposedely a major world power, but they can't figure out to give their pet dogs rabies vaccinations??? C'mon.

Considering how they treat their HUMAN citizens, am I really surprised they would do this to dogs? Nope. Disgusting.

What a great choice for the 2008 Olympics: Hi, Welcome to China. Our government beats dogs to death.

[KennelMom]

Oh...and IF they decide to murder tens of thousands of dogs in the street, they don't even have the decency to do it humanely. Disgusting, pathetic and enraging.

[Beryl]

ITA. They can't eliminate all of the animals that can spread rabies so why wipe out only dogs? Also, I didn't read that they checked to see if the target dog is not part of the already vaccinated 3% . You'd think that they'd inform owners that they must have vaccinatons within X days and then start rounding up strays.

This nation is too smart for this foolishness.

[rmci]

China has reported the second highest rates of illness and death from human rabies worldwide and most cases have been transmitted from domestic dogs. Looks like they're panicking. Not how they should have gone about it, but when people panic they aren't thinking clearly.

KennelMom: They are supposedely a major world power, but they can't figure out to give their pet dogs rabies vaccinations??? C'mon.

China has millions of dogs running around unleashed in rural areas, many more than you can imagine. These communities are spreadout, poor and do not have vaccinations for people or animals readily available.

The Chinese government could have educated their healthcare workers, made vaccines more readily available, and implemented a gov't-funded vaccination/sterilization program, but I guess they felt their "slaughter" campaign was a less expensive alternative.

[c0_re]

I can't belive this is a suprise to anyone, Chinahas made progress with it's human rights issues over the past decade but they still have A LONG WAYS TO GO to catch up with the west.