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MONTH: October 2006

India reaffirms support of
Animal Birth Control program

NEW DELHI, ISTANBUL, BUCHAREST, BELGRADE--The historic progress of compassionate teachings about animals from east to west appeared evident yet again in September 2006 rabies and street dog population control developments.

India in September 2006 reaffirmed neuter/return and vaccination as the official national anti-rabies strategy.

Turkey was embarrassed by exposés of inadequate supervision of a similar policy, brought into effect by law in June 2005.

Several Romanian local governments, including in the capital city of Bucharest, appeared to be either ignoring or trying to roll back animal control holding requirements, to expedite killing.

In Belgrade, the Serbian capital, municipal agencies allegedly actively discouraged nonprofit animal welfare efforts, while escalating killing dogs and cats.

"Rabies is prevalent throughout India except on the islands of Lakshadweep and Andaman and Nicobar, but has a low public health priority," the Indian Ministry of Environment & Forests acknowledged in a September 20, 2006 statement of support for the Animal Birth Control strategy that has been national policy since December 1997. "Though exact statistical data is not available, it is estimated that in India approximately 20,000 people die of rabies every year," which also "causes a large number of deaths in domestic and wild animals.

"Moreover," the Ministry of Environment & Forests continued, "there is a huge expenditure incurred on post-exposure vaccination. Therefore, there is an urgent need eradicate this dreaded disease, as has been achieved by Malaysia and Singapore.

"The main vector of rabies in India is the dog. The twin strategies to control and eradicate rabies in India will be to achieve at least 80% prophylactic immunization of dog population and to push forward the existing ABC/Anti-Rabies program for stray and community dogs.

"More than 70,000 stray or community dogs are [already] being sterilized every year and given anti-rabies vaccine," the Ministry of Environment & Forests summarized. "These dogs are returned to their original habitat after sterilization. This program," carried out by local charities with Animal Welfare Board of India support, "has significantly reduced the incidence of rabies in Delhi, Jaipur, Mumbai, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, Banglore, Kalimpong, and Kolkata."

The Ministry of Environment & Forests admitted the difficulty of achieving "mass immunization of stray or community dogs who are not accessible for injectable rabies vaccination," but explained that "the problem can now be addressed," referring somewhat obscurely to the introduction of oral rabies vaccines for street dogs.

"The entire success of this project," the Ministry of Environment & Forests concluded, trying to rally cooperation, "rests on local municipal bodies, rural administrations, and state government veterinary services," which in some parts of India have been slow to encourage the ABC approach.

Killing street dogs, the Ministry emphasized, "is inhumane and does not go well with our cultural ethos of love and compassion for animals."

Elaborated Blue Cross of India chief executive Chinny Krishna, who first demonstrated the ABC approach in 1964, "There is an oral rabies vaccine for street dogs, claimed to be most effective, now available from Virbac of France. With 26% import duty, it sells in India for 120 rupees ($2.75 U.S.) per dose. Intervet is on the verge of releasing an oral rabies vaccine for street dogs, and competition may bring the cost down."

The Virbac vaccine, Krishna said, "can be stored at four degrees Centigrade indefinitely and used at temperatures up to 40 degrees Centigrade and can even be kept at 40 degrees Centigrade for several days. It is supposed to be quite palatable, though it smells terrible. Even if a dog receives up to 10 times the normal dose, it is supposed to be okay.

"It is a live vaccine," Krishna noted, "so it must be given to the animals by someone who will be responsible for picking up uneaten baits before moving on.

"Dogs who eat the oral vaccine can be vaccinated by the injectable even immediately thereafter, so if an orally vaccinated dog is later spayed and vaccinated conventionally, there would be no adverse reaction."

Turkey

In Turkey, explained Linda Taal of the Dutch organization Stichting ActieZwerf-honden, which works closely with several Turkish organizations, "The June 2004 law stipulating that neuter and release is the only permitted method of solving the stray dog issue took effect in July 2005.

"For part of Istanbul the work was contracted out to a pesticide company. The situation is abominable," Taal continued. "People from the Homeless Animals & Environmental Protection Society (EHDKD) and Society for the Protection of Animals (SHKD) on September 15, 2006 photographed the evidence at the Sariyer Kocatas shelter," an Istanbul municipal facility now operated by a private contractor.

Taal and others soon distributed the shocking photo portfolio worldwide.

"This year, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality opened a tender for neutering and releasing 5,500 stray dogs," retired economist and longtime Sariyer Kocatas shelter volunteer Dr. Bilge Okay of EHDKD explained to ANIMAL PEOPLE. "No animal protection organization could enter the tender," because of a requirement that entrants should already have completed a project with the municipality worth at least $267,000.

"The contract was given to the lowest bidder, Biosav A.S., which is an insecticide producing firm," and subcontracted a firm called Anadolu Ilac Gida Ltd. Sti. to do the work.

"SHKD and EHDKD, as two organisations experienced in neuter/release, offered our help free of charge," Okay said. "We offered to train their vets in endoscopic neutering techniques, at which our vets are experienced. We gave them two vets, whose salaries are paid by the animal organisation FHDD (Friends of Fethiye Animals) to do operations and to train their vets. These two vets worked for the project for two months. We recommended to them another vet who was experienced in neutering. They fired him after a short time because he objected to how things were handled. We offered our experienced team to train their dog catchers. They didn't accept our offers.

"The dogs are carried in vans without ventilation," Okay alleged. "Dogs who are picked up in the morning arrive dead. Sick dogs are taken to operation without any medical treatment. And we have had many calls from animal lovers saying that they are releasing dogs in places where the dogs don't belong. We talked to AIG several times, telling them about our concerns," Okay said, before taking the complaints public.

"Our aim in publishing our pictures," Okay emphasized, "is not to destroy neuter/release. On the contrary, we want the neuter/release project to be applied properly and humanely, and to be successful. We have struggled for many years for neuter/release to be accepted as the only rational and humane way to solve the stray dog problem. Now that the implementation has begun, it is our only wish for it to be successful, because we are aware that the alternative will be poisoning, as for hundreds of years."

ANIMAL PEOPLE on September 17 asked Biosav to explain the EHDKD and SHKD photos, but received no response.

There have been other difficulties in introducing the Turkish ABC program.

"The regulations state that every municipality in Turkey is now responsible for their own neutering program, and they have to build temporary shelters and operating clinics. They also have to engage a veterinarian to carry out the neutering operations," explained Friends of Fethiye Animals founder Perihan Agnelli, who led the effort to make neuter/return the Turkish national policy.

"Some municipalities are employing young, newly qualified vets to do this work, but they do not have experience in performing spaying and castration," continued Agnelli. "This has resulted in municipalities asking us for help in training their new vets. Some of the vets come to our centre in Fethiye, where we accommodate them.

"Whilst many municipalities are setting up their own programs, which they will manage with their own personnel, some of the larger cities like Istanbul, Ankara, and Sivas have hired private organizationa," Agnelli acknowledged. "I haven't heard anything negative from either Ankara or Sivas, but I have heard that the company that won the bid in Istanbul is making a mess of things."

British clothier Robert Smith, who has sponsored several sheltering and neuter/ return pilot projects in Istanbul, "offered to undertake catching, neutering, and releasing dogs on their behalf," Agnelli added. "The company agreed, but the municipality refused the help."

Romania

Smith, also involved for about seven years in Romania, on September 15 unveiled "a proposal and budget for a neuter/return project in the whole province of Bihor, Romania, which we intend to implement over the next three years," he said.

But Smith pre-empted his own Internet discussion of the project after becoming aware of a Romanian Senate proposal which, as translated by Romanian animal advocates, would limit the holding time for impounded dogs to just five days.

As ANIMAL PEOPLE went to press, Smith and others were still trying to establish whether that was the legislative intent, or whether the intent was to set a minimum holding time of five days, as required by the U.S. Laboratory Animal Welfare Act in 1966 and reiterated in the Animal Welfare Act of 1971. Originally applied only to animals who were sold to labs, the five-day standard became the default minimum for all impounded animals in most states.

Sara Turetta of the Associazione Save the Dogs and Fundatia Daisy Hope founder Aura Maratas meanwhile reported aggressive municipal dog collection and killing in downtown Bucharest.

"The action was run by night with the support of the police," Turetta e-mailed. "The 'cleaning' of the area," in the neighborhood where a loose pit bull terrier killed a Japanese visitor in February 2006, "was done," Turetta alleged, "in order to give a western look to the capital during the meeting of the International Francophone Organiz-ation," held on September 28-29.

The most recent and apparently the most limited of many Bucharest dog-purges during the past 10 years occurred while Turetta was providing emergency help to the impounded dogs of Calarasi, which she described as "a very poor town 60 kilometres from Cernavoda, on the frontier with Bulgaria."

In 2003 Turetta "visited the kennel run by the Sufletel association," she recalled, "which was starting activity concurrent with the town killing stray dogs. Save the Dogs has a video clip, shot in 2003, showing the violence of the dog catchers. Many dogs were choked to death on the street with metal nooses," Turetta alleged. "The dogs who survived capture were killed by an injection of air or toxic agents in the peritoneum. After protest by local animal lovers, they shifted to shooting, which they are still doing. According to the local press and Sufletel, dogs are still brutally caught, brought to the edge of town, and shot by huntsmen.

"When we visited the kennel in 2003, we gave one single piece of advice to the chair of Sufletel: stop!" Turetta recalled. "They did not have the economic resources nor the medical knowledge to ensure decent living conditions to the dogs hosted there.

"Back in 2003 and today still we cannot manage a second facility, and at that time we could not give them any economic aid. Calarasi was one of many emergency situations in Romania, and we had to step backward despite our willingness to help.

"Unfortunately, the association did not follow our advice," Turetta said. "This year, Sufletel asked us for the help of our mobile clinic. On August 8 we went to Calarasi to arrange for neutering the 230 dogs at the kennel. About 150-170 of them were severely ill. Almost all the dogs were bald from mange. Many were close to death.

"Near the kennel," Turetta continued, "there were four or five tons of bones, the basic food for the dogs, mixed with corpses, left to rot under the sun because the authorities cannot and do not want to organize a waste collection service."

Turetta published photographs of the scene on Save The Dogs web site.

Starting on August 9, Turetta said, "Four vets from Unisvet, three volunteers from Save the Dogs, and a worker from the Cernavoda kennel spent three 10-hour days at the Calarasi kennel. Unfortunately, some dogs were in such poor health that they had to be euthanized. The rest received worming and flea treatment. About 100 dogs were treated for mange. About 40 male dogs were neutered." Construction was started on new perimeter barriers and kennels.

"The bones and corpses were removed by a bulldozer and disposed of," Turetta added. "Unfortunately, despite a picture of our team published on the first page of a local newspaper, dog catchers were working the next day in the city center," capturing more dogs to be killed and increasing the inclination of local animal lovers to take strays to the overcrowded shelter.

Turetta in September led a follow-up visit to Calarasi, with a mobile clinic donated by the Dutchypuppy Foundation and additional support raised from Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the U.S.
This time they sterilized 50 dogs, focusing on pregnant females; treated 150 dogs for mange; introduced microchipping; followed up on making physical improvements to the shelter; and began making staff changes to bring in more caring and dedicated people.

"We will keep you updated," Turetta pledged.

Serbia

The Serbian situation reached international notice through appeals for international political support e-mailed during the last weeks of September by Slavica Mazak Beslic of EPAR (Friends of Animals Society), who operates a shelter in Subotica.

"Local authorities sent a building inspector, who commanded us to destroy all of our dog houses and destroy our dog shelter with 450 dogs," Beslic said, lamenting that even before the demolition order came, "We need more boxes for 43 dominant dogs who are still on chains because they cannot be together with other dogs.

"When we as a nonprofit nongovernmental organisation asked for help from the republic and local authorities, and offered collaboration, they refused," Beslic said.

Part of Beslic's complaint concerned her contention that the government should pay the cost of vaccinating the shelter dogs against rabies. The inspection and demolition order appeared to follow a dispute over vaccination.

Beslic illustrated her arguments-- and the need for improvement in Serbian animal control practices--with photos of about 30 dead dogs in plastic bags at a garbage dump. The photos, Beslic said, were taken on September 20, 2006, in the town of Smeder-evo. The dogs were impounded without food or water, according to Beslic, and then poisoned or clubbed.

"We try to explain to the authorities of Serbia that a more useful, economical, and more humane approach, including sterilization and adoption, is the best solution for stray dog control, but nothing changes," Beslic alleged. "They now do mass killing and sterilization together, and we can see that last week some dogs were sterilized and after this the same dogs were killed."

Investigating Beslic's allegations, Belgrade activist and journalist Jelena told ANIMAL PEOPLE that, "Belgrade owns one killing pound, in the OVCA district, and sponsors several private killing pounds around Serbia," some of which appeared to be implicated. The OVCA pound practices apparently represent the norms.

Taking statements from six witnesses to OVCA pound procedures, Zaric concluded that it "does not work to law, does not possess appropriate management, and the workers do not possess the skills needed to work with animals.

"Captured animals are kept without water, food, and proper medical care," Zaric summarized from the witnesses' statements. "Sterilization is performed on animals who are in very bad health, and are held further without proper post-operative care.

"Killing methods," that Zaric was told about, "include injecting various toxic detergents, injecting the concentrated insecticide Nuvan, various kind of oral poisoning, suffocation by plastic bags or ropes, hanging, clubbing, smashing animals' heads with heavy doors, smashing restrained animals on the floor, and injections of T-61," a paralytic lethal agent used mainly to kill mink on fur farms, used by some U.S. animal control agencies until banned in 1986.

"The OVCA facility is closed to the public," Zaric added. "The procedure for dog adoption is very hard, and it takes more than 5 hours to obtain needed documents to get inside. Even with the needed papers, no one with our investigation could get inside the area where the dogs are held. It is very hard to get inside the killing area. All of our witnesses were citizens who under pressure from workers gave money or gifts before entering the area where dogs were held in cages.

"By statements from all sides involved, every year, from October through April, Belgrade kills more than 6,000 dogs," Zaric said, "but there are no precise statistics.

"Sterilization plans have failed many times," Zaric continued. "Pet sterilization is not popular in Serbia. We do all we can, without the help of city officials.

"Caretakers spend their money to sterilize street animals," Zaric reported, "and then the dog catchers kill them."--Merritt Clifton