Another Chinese City Plans to Slaughter Thousands of Dogs

By Linda Orlando

Last week a county in southwestern China conducted a mass slaughter of 50,000 dogs, usually beating the dogs to death right in front of their owners. The news of the killings brought criticism from all around the world. Now a second Chinese city is planning a mass slaughter of potentially many more dogs in order to control a rabies outbreak.

In response to the deaths of 16 people from rabies in the last eight months, officials in the eastern city of Jining said Friday that they are planning to kill all dogs within there miles of areas where rabies had been found. The official Xinhua News Agency said that the government hasn’t specified when the cull would begin or how the animals will be killed. The city of Jining is home to about 500,000 dogs, so the total number of dogs slaughtered this time will be significantly higher than last week’s killings.

Last weeks slaughter prompted a flood of criticism aimed at the Chinese government for choosing to be brutally reactive to rabies outbreaks rather than proactively work to prevent them in the first place. Rabies cases are on the rise in China, and more than 2,000 people die from the disease each year. Yet only 3% of the country’s dogs are vaccinated against rabies.

Other dog slaughters have been reported elsewhere in China this year, but this is the largest and most wide-reaching one to date. The government says it has no standard policy of destroying dogs, but they also have no standard policy in place to require vaccinations to prevent the spread of rabies. For a so-called civilized country to engage in bludgeoning family pets instead of taking steps to prevent the problem in the first place is nothing less than barbaric.

The World Health Organization has not directly condemned the dog slaughtering taking place in China, but WHO experts have noted that the situation only serves to bring to the forefront the lack of coordination and other problems inherent in China’s healthcare system.

Zhang Luping, founder of the Beijing human and Animal Environmental Education Center, responded to Friday’s announcement by telling reporters, "I think this is completely insane. What’s more, this really damages our national image and sets a really bad example to show how lazy and inconsiderate those local government officials are." Zhang said that although there are no laws in China that will allow citizens to halt the killings, many animal protection activists, including her organization, are desperately appealing to the Chinese government through the media to try to change official policy. "I think this brutal and cold-blooded campaign should stop as soon as possible," Zhang said.