International Datelines

From: Animal People July/August 1998

A dog’s life makes a difference

	BANGKOK, TAIPEI, SINGAPORE, JOHOR BARU, JAKARTA––Mai Thai left Thailand on June 13 for a better life in San Diego, but may be long remembered as the dog who bettered the lives of more than a million Bangkok strays, by persuading the city government to propose escalating a subsidized neutering program that already rates among the world’s most ambitious and effective. With Mai Thai making headlines, Bangkok city government health advisor Supong Limtanakool told a May 30 gathering of 200 persons concerned with stray dog control that he would recommend payments of 50 baht per animal, worth about $2.00, as incentives to animal owners to get their pets spayed or neutered at any of the six low-cost city clinics.
Mina Sharpe and Mai Tai. Photograph courtesy T-AARF.
Limtanakool thought the program could be up and running, with official approval, by late summer. This would make Bangkok the first major city in the world to actually pay residents to fix animals, recognizing potential savings in animal control and public health costs. The San Francisco SPCA pays $5.00 per cat, Rottweiler, pit bull terrier, or homeless person’s pet brought in for neutering, which relative to the U.S. standard of living has about the same purchasing power as 50 baht, but the SF/SPCA incentive is funded strictly from private gifts. “While Bangkok is already providing free vaccination and veterinary services,” explained Bangkok Post reporter Anchalee Kongrut Uamdao Noikorn, “the new campaign would be a full-scale operation to control the population of stray dogs,” currently estimated at about 1.3 million, among around 3.5 million sharing the city with 5.5 million humans. At a time of belt-tightening throughout Asia, the proposed neutering bounty is expected to prove both a strong incentive and a money-saver for the city. “Bangkok currently spends 600,000 baht a year on neutering, eight baht a day to feed and treat strays brought in by dogcatchers, and eight baht per abandoned dog brought in. More than 50,000 stray dogs a year are caught and kept in the city shelter at Din Daeng,” Anchalee Kongrut continued. To hold costs down, stray dogs are killed if not claimed or adopted within three days. Thanks to the success of the Bangkok low-cost neutering clinics and public tolerance of free-roaming dogs, the Bangkok animal control killing ratio, at just nine per thousand human residents, is nonetheless lower than that of any U.S. cities except San Francisco (4.6), New York (5.5), San Diego (7.5), and Seattle (7.8). But more neutering still, and fewer strays, could save Bangkok much of the cost of administering thousands of post-exposure rabies vaccinations each year, and of isolating about 10 residents a year who actually develop rabies. Across Thailand, about 14 million people per year require post-exposure rabies vaccination; 70 to 80 people per year die of rabies. Bangkok hopes to point the way toward eliminating rabies, which is still common in much of Asia. Veterinary Practitioners Association of Thailand president Parntep Ratanakorn wants to add microchip identification to the roster of services provided to dogs at the city clinics. That would cost about 150 baht per dog. Microchipping may be seen, for the moment, as unaffordable luxury. Even the low-cost neutering and vaccination program could be jeopardized by the ongoing economic crisis––but sympathy for homeless dogs occasioned by Mai Thai has helped to keep humane response a political priority. Despite the fiscal crisis, Bangkok officials seem unlikely to emulate the dog control practices of northeastern Thailand, where dog-eating reportedly caught on after introduction by Vietnamese refugees. Around Tharae city, suppliers long since exhausted the local free-roaming dog population, and now buy all the dogs they can get from nearby villages.
Reported Jiraporn Wongpaithoon for Associated Press in November 1996, “dog meat costs as much as beef” in the Tharae region, and is “also used as a protein supplment for cattle, fish, and even other dogs. The hide,” Wongpaithoon wrote, “is turned into bags and drum skins, while the scrotums become gloves for golfers. Dried penises are exported to China and Taiwan, where some people believe they enhance sexual prowess when consumed.”
	Caged dog by dog meat restaurant courtesy Progressive Animal Welfare Society .
Before slaughter, Wongpaithoon wrote, “The dogs are starved for three days to induce submission.” Only then are they “clubbed and their throats slit,” Wongpaithoon testified. Mina Sharpe “For a homeless mother of four like Mai Thai,” Anchalee Kongrut wrote in the June 14 Bangkok Post, “a dog who used to survive from garbage bins, nothing could have been worse than the car accident that left her half paralyzed” in December 1997. “The twist of Mai Thai’s fate began when 16-year-old American student Mina Sharpe,” visiting from Taiwan, “saw a local taxi driver bottle-feed a pup while walking on the street in Huan Hin, Prachup Khiri Khan. “Curious, she asked where the mother was. There, in a field nearby, lay the smelly and dying mongrel. Snuggling near her were three malnourished puppies.” Mai Thai had suffered a broken back and severe infection, but like the taxi driver who did what he could, Sharpe believes in doing what she can.
Sharpe knows, too, that the inspiring rescue of even one animal can inspire a movement, whereas contemplation of millions all at once can discourage and deter.
	Photograph of rescued street pup courtesy T-AARF
The taxi driver showed Sharpe a severely suffering canine family. Sharpe saw the chance to help boost humane concerns. Investing $400 for care and boarding of Mai Thai and family at the Thonglor Veterinary Hospital in Bangkok, Sharpe found U.S. homes for the puppies, arranged for her grandmother to foster Mai Thai until she could be placed in a good permanent home, and had a special wheel constructed to enable Mai Thai to get around––temporarily, Sharpe hoped. Now in the U.S. Mai Thai is receiving physical therapy, in hopes she may walk again. The Bangkok Post and other Thai media followed the story for months. Mai Thai became a national symbol, and Sharpe a heroine to millions of Thais who love animals. Sharpe had a point to make––as forcefully as possible. She was appalled when after a 1997 visit to Taiwan, Humane Society of the U.S. vice president for companion animals Martha Armstrong declared that the dog surplus there can only be reduced by breaking down the influence of Buddhist reverence for life, introducing U.S.-style high-volume shelter killing. Armstrong organized workshops to teach dog-killing by means of sodium penta-barbitrol––while complaining that the drug is not even available in Taiwan at lethal strength. Sharpe wrote to ANIMAL PEOPLE to protest. “As an American living in Taiwan for the past four years,” she explained, “and having devoted most of that time to helping strays, founding and running the no-kill Taipei Abandoned Animal Rescue Foundation,” which she began in October 1994, at age 12, two months after her arrival, “I feel there is absolutely no reason for mass killing to be practiced here. The real answer is to put money toward mass spay/neuter programs for all strays, and toward developing proper animal shelters and humane societies.” American actor Steven Seagal also advocated low-cost neutering during a May visit he made to Taiwan on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. But Sharpe has done much more than talk. Working with minimal outside support, Sharpe and a few volunteer helpers have already treated 300 to 350 dogs via the Yang Ming Veterinary Hospital in Taipei, which gives them discounted treatment and free boarding for animals under care, and have set up an ambitious World Wide Web site for T-AARF: http://www.toapayoh.com/taarf/. “All dogs in our program are spayed or neutered prior to being adopted,” Sharpe stipulates. “Additionally, our vet offers reduced-cost spaying and neutering to our clients, as well as free spaying/neutering to street dogs we bring in to be castrated and put back on the streets. These dogs are kept approximately a week in our kennel, during which time they are neutered, vaccinated, tagged and microchipped with our number. Should they ever be picked up, our name would be recognized, and we would get the dog back to put back out.”
	The lives of Taiwanese street dogs are often far from ideal, and Sharpe recognizes that releasing the dogs is only a stop-gap––but she returns them exclusively to locales where they seem accepted. Each T-AARF-treated dog then becomes an ambassador for fighting overpopulation, neglect, and cruelty by cultivating rather than opposing the Buddhist life ethic.
Photograph of rescued street pup courtesy T-AARF
Sharpe’s approach mirrors the highly successful Animal Birth Control programs in effect in many major cities of India. ABC has worked so well in Bombay, Delhi, Chennai, and Jaipur that the Animal Welfare Board of India and national government in December 1997 accepted the abolition of animal control killing by 2005 as an official goal for the nation. Neuter/release of either dogs or cats, however, runs directly contrary to the official policies of PETA and HSUS. After PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk visited Taiwan and denounced the treatment of stray dogs during a book promotion tour, Taipei authorities reportedly proclaimed that all dogs must be microchipped, with fines of up to $600 for owners of dogs found at large. The crackdown coincided with allegedly escalating instances of animal abuse by street gangs during initiation rites. Shen Jung-chen, director of the Animal Protection League of Taiwan, asserted that from January through May 1998 she had collected 107 eyewitness accounts of youths torturing and killing dogs and cats within the greater Taipei area. Many of the attacks were documented by local newspaper coverage. While aware of the abuse cases, Sharpe is skeptical about the alleged imposition of microchipping, the net effect of which would likely be to reduce the number of Taiwanese willing to claim dogs. “Since this is the first I have heard of it,” Sharpe said when told about it by ANIMAL PEOPLE, “I’d say that while PETA might think a microchipping requirement now exists, it either does not, or is so little known that no one obeys it. Even if it was in effect, or came into effect, with so many dogs and so little backup, I’d expect it to have little effect on what we do.” Sharpe’s long-term hope is to place all the dogs T-AARF handles in good homes. Currently, adoptive homes are scarce in Taiwan. Therefore, promoting the adoption of Taiwanese dogs by Americans via the T-AARF web site, Sharpe has arranged for U.S. visitors to take more than three dozen dogs back with them, for relay to the adoptors. The U.S. interest helps to tell Taiwan that these dogs’ lives have value, and that the small, intelligent dogs who predominate in Taiwan can become coveted pets. (Contact T-TAARF c/o 800 Chung Shan N. Rd., Sec. 6, Shihilin, Taipei, Taiwan 111, Republic of China; sharptpe@toapayoh.com.) Taiwan The 70 animal control shelters in Taiwan killed about 200,000 dogs in 1997, out of an estimated homeless dog population of 1.5 million, according to the Ministry of Agriculture. Under a five-year plan adopted in 1997, the Taipei newspaper Tze-Li reported on June 4, Taiwan is to spend $48 million to “kill all street dogs,” following the recommendations of WSPA, HSUS, and PETA. About $19 million is to go toward dog capture. The rest, $29 million, was reportedly allocated to kill them and dispose of their remains by “acceptable” means.
“In response to PETA’s awareness and advocacy campaign regarding the inhumane treatment of abandoned dogs on Taiwan,” a May 1998 statement from the Council of Agriculture of the Executive Yuan (executive branch) of the government of the Republic of China acknowledged “that there are individual cases of the inhumane treatment of dogs,” but insisted “we are not burying alive, drowning, electrocuting, and burning two million dogs. Such inhumane treatment is not the norm in our country,” the statement said, “ nor is it government policy.”
	Photograph of rescued street dog courtesy T-AARF
Newkirk, however, told Tze-Li that when she visited the Keelung pound in April, staff were still drowning dogs, while starvation and cannibalism remained evident at the Shanchung pound. Current initiatives, says the ministry, include pushing for passage of a national animal protection law, which will introduce national dog licensing and penalize abandonment. The ministry claims to be subsidizing spays of female dogs, though details of the program are scarce; improving the training of animal control officers; and introducing public education “on the proper treatment of dogs.” The Council of Agriculture Executive Yuan admitted in a March 1998 special report that a December 1996 survey of dog pounds done by WSPA at invitation of the Life Conservationist Association of Taiwan had discovered “that the majority of dog pounds” were “unacceptable.” But a letter dated January 26, 1998, signed by WSPA director for companion animals Joy Leney and American SPCA veterinary consultant Joseph L. Tait, acknowledged that since December 1996, “Approximately 30 new facilities for holding stray dogs have been built, with budgets allocated for food and veterinary practice,” while “many of the facilities identified as ‘unacceptable’ have either been closed or replaced by new facilities, comparable to any such facilities in the world.”
	Mira Fong of the International Alliance for Taiwan Dogs disputes the official claims. “News reporter Christa Schectl represents Bild and three other newspapers in Germany,” Fong told ANIMAL PEOPLE. “She visited several dog pounds in Taiwan between June 12 and June 20, 1998. In Taoyuan County, the Tu-Tou dog pound killed dogs by electrocution, clubbing, and live burial. Water and food were not given.”
Photograph of street dog at time of rescuecourtesy T-AARF
Fong also cited a June 19 article from the Ming-Shen Daily, which summarized pound conditions in 10 districts of Taoyuan County. In three districts, the paper said, impounded dogs are poisoned. In one district, dogs are electrocuted. The killing methods used by the rest were not identified. Fong said, “The necessary funds to reform stray dog conditions are mainly being used by the Taiwan government to compensate pig farmers for the 4.3 million pigs brutally slaughtered in 1997” by the Taiwanese national guard, to put down an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease. “Though the government of Taiwan now provides some funding to improve dog pounds,” she allowed, “this is not being used for that purpose, but is pocketed by some of the garbage collectors” who do most of the Taiwanese animal control work.
“Captured dogs are not fed or cared for during the three-day holding period before being destroyed,” Fong continued. Even the new shelters, she charged, “lack santiation and are often overcrowded. Most staff lack basic knowledge of humane management.”
	Photograph of rescued street dog courtesy T-AARF
Fong accused the “newly formed Stray Dog Care Mobile Units available in Taipei only” of giving “false injections” instead of shots strong enough to kill strays, and of cremating dogs alive. At the Sanchung City dog pound, Fong said, dogs were reportedly starved to death as recently as March 1998. PETA and allied organizations protested Taiwan pound conditions outside Republic of China offices in the U.S. on June 3, and intend to hold further demonstrations on August 15, National Homeless Animals’ Day in the U.S., demanding that the promised government initiatives proceed on schedule. Whether or not Fong’s claims are accurate, and whether or not the Council of Agriculture Executive Yuan is acting in good faith, however, the Asian economic crisis may inhibit reform even more than either corruption or political inertia. (Contact the International Alliance for Taiwan Dogs c/o Mira Fong at 122 Sombrio Drive, Santa Fe, NM 87501.) Disaster and koi The Asian economic disaster, starting in Indonesia almost a year ago––coinciding with forest fires that devastated agriculture, logging, and tourism––has now undercut the fragile investment-and-export-based prosperity of all Southeast Asia and Japan. As Nicholas B. Kristoff of The New York Times detailed in a June 10-11 two-part series, layoffs are fast eroding hard-won gains in education, public health, women’s rights, children’s rights, and general civil liberties. Kristoff pointed out that a sudden surplus of hungry workers means wage and safety standards go ignored––and displaced unskilled workers, lacking land and other resources, turn desperately to nature for sustenance. Kristoff described whole villages relearning the ways of poor ancestors, competing with wildlife to catch edible insects and invading parks to find edible plants and firewood. A crackdown on child labor across Southeast Asia might mean far more jobs for adults, as abolishing child labor in the U.S. and Britain did almost a century ago, but legal authority over Southeast Asian workplaces is divided among a dozen nations, each with many regional and local governments. Recognition of the child labor problem is widespread among educated Asians, yet there is no crackdown due to fear that regardless of any longterm benefits, enforcing even the weak and long neglected statutes already on the books might bring the immediate closure of factories whose only hope of survival is to produce more goods, more cheaply, than rivals in nearby territories who might remain free to use children. In the short run this would mean more poverty, more social unrest, and more hungry children. Kristoff mentioned animals only in passing. But animals, the most disadvantaged and disenfranchised class of all, were among the first casualties of both the boom and the bust––often in association with human misery. India, for instance, in early April returned to Bangladesh 70 people including 38 children, ages 4-7, who were intercepted in Calcutta as smugglers tried to take them to Dubai and the United Arab Emirates as virtual slaves. The women were allegedly to be sold to brothels; the 17 youngest boys were to be sold as camel jockeys, a misnomer, as the children are strapped to the camels and have no control of them, are kept emaciated so as to weigh as little as possible, and are reportedly often killed or injured in illegal races. Survivors are eventually turned out to beg. Adult Asians have ventured abroad to seek their fortunes since Chinese laborers built the first transcontinental railroads and did the most dangerous mining work in the Old West. In recent years, Asians have been more inclined to chase opportunity in wealthier Asian nations. Now the immigrants are being expelled, and are often robbed by corrupt authorities during the deportation process. Amid surges of anti-immigrant feeling in the U.S., reports of aliens allegedly eating cats and dogs have historically helped fuel the backlash. Thus the prominence the Straits Times of Singapore gave on June 16 to the case of two missing koi fish may be of more than just casual cultural note. According to reporter Chi Chiew Sum, engineering firm director David Lau, 44, followed a trail of broken scales from his pond to find one of his koi in the refrigerator of a house occupied by Thai workers Ratchata Mangkorn, 24, and Samart Setraksa, 22, who had already eaten the other koi. Worth about $5,000, the koi might have lived 100 years or more. Known to be among the most intelligent of fish, koi are often passed along for generations by Asian families who can afford them, as are pet parrots. Mangkorn and Setraksa drew three months in jail apiece. Lau reportedly still has 25 koi. Wildlife suffered from prosperity when energetic economies stimulated logging and development, destroying habitat. The growing purchasing power of the Asian middle class raised demand for costly traditional medicines made from tiger bone and rhino horn, sealing stamps made from elephant ivory, and purported aphrodisiacs cut from the bodies of almost any creature with visible genitals. But prosperity also brought regrowth of long neglected traditions of protecting animals. As rising wages produced disposable income and a social class with time to volunteer, conscientious Thais in particular recalled Buddhist religious teachings about animals, akin to those of the Jains in India and sharing origins in the same time and place. Except for instances of temples keeping individual symbolic animals, or even small menageries, partly to draw visitors, the Buddhist sanctuary tradition had lapsed for generations, but revived and boomed with the Thai economy during most of the 1990s. Tung Sikan Among the major beneficiaries was the Tung Sikan no-kill shelter, located for 10 years on land belonging to Bhuddist temple in Thon Buri, a Bangkok suburb. Founded by former Bangkok governor Chuom Long, who abolished the poisoning of homeless dogs, the Tung Sikan shelter is administered by his wife, Sirilak Srimuang, who also heads the Society for Promotion of Animal Welfare. By June 1997, the Tung Sikan shelter had more than 3,000 resident animals, mostly dogs, but also several hundred cats and numerous livestock, supported by donations and attended by volunteers. But Buddhist charity, like western religious charity, does tend to put people first, having evolved to provide the social services that government cannot or does not. Education and health care get first priority ––not least because they also tend to bring in the most donations. Animals get lowest priority, usually, as they do not grow up to endow temples; neither do they bequeath estates. The abbot of the Buddhist temple hosting the Tung Sikan sanctuary decided in early 1997, before the economic collapse, that his order should realize the maximum return from their assets while they could, and won a court order to evict the sanctuary, so that the land could be sold to developers. The sanctuary moved to an equal-sized site in Kanchanburi, 14 miles from central Bangkok, two miles from any main road. “The animals should be happier now, enjoying clean air, forests, and rivers,” Anjira Assavanonda wrote in the Bangkok Post, “but fate does not favor them. Pimolorn Angsavothai, 45, manager of the shelter since 1990, disclosed that donations have decreased remarkably due to the economic downturn and the remote location.” At the old site the Tung Sikan shelter reportedly raised about $8,000 a month from visitors––about two-thirds of the cost of operations, just under the total cost of animal food. The rest went mainly to staff. Five senior employees were paid about $1,000 a month, 20% less than the Thai average income. Seven others got $750 a month.
	At the new site, the shelter as of March 1998 raised less than half as much. By refusing new admissions of animals, the staff had gradually cut the numbers in care to 1,800 dogs, 200 cats, 12 goats, two sheep, seven ducks, and one goose. The dogs’ diet consisted almost entirely of boiled rice. Pimolorn pledged to step up fundraising, but how, and to what avail with available resources declining, was an open question.
Photograph of rescued street dog courtesy T-AARF
At deadline, however, Tung Sikan was still functioning, at 117 Moo 7, Ban Pu Pradoo, Tambon Nongbua, Muang district, Kanchanburi 71190, Thailand, telephone 662-374-1166 or 662-374-8855. Shooting ANIMAL PEOPLE at deadline also had no further word as to the progress of the massacre of 150,000 dogs, 100,000 cats, and 170,000 longtailed macaques ordered in East Flores, Indonesia, by regent Henke Mukin on May 6, ostensibly because of a rabies outbreak but in terms suggesting that the real purpose was to warn protesters against the since deposed Suharto dictatorship that anyone perceived as a public nuisance might be massacred. East Flores is among the parts of Indonesia farthest from Jakarta, the capital, but is close to uneasily subjugated East Timor. Former Indonesian dictator Suharto named his vice president, B.J. Habibie, to succeed him. Habibie sent mixed messages to East Timor in late June, freeing 12 political prisoners who were associated with the East Timoran independence movement, yet appointing retired Lieutenant General Sintong Panjaitan as his senior military advisor. In 1994 a U.S. Federal District Court judge in Boston ordered Panjaitan to pay $14 million in damages to the mother of Kamal Bamadhaj, a 20-year-old student at a New Zealand university, who was among the estimated 270 victims of a 1971 massacre of East Timorans by troops under Panjaitan. According to Philip Shenon of The New York Times, Panjaitan was attending Boston University when the case was filed, but left the U.S. in 1992, and did not return to face the charges. “Video of the massacre was smuggled out of Indonesia and showed soldiers opening fire on unarmed demonstrators without provocation,” Shenon wrote. Massacres of dogs and other animals have political value in Southeast Asia beyond just intimidating protest. As with the annual Atlantic Canada seal-bashing, animal massacres allow frustrated young men with low skills, little education, and no real economic opportunity to vent rage against relatively helpless victims, rather than wage revolution. Such massacres also enable the power holders to hire and thereby control the thug element.
	Secondarily, the dead can be eaten, and killing scavenging animals can also make more refuse available to the poor.
Image of cat as meat courtesy Progressive Animal Welfare Society
Thus as the economic depression followed the uncontrolled forest fires through Malaysia, the Veterinary Services Department of Penang state in late March responded to the first local rabies cases since 1931 by ordering the destruction of an estimated 40,000 street dogs––more than 11 times the 4,500 dogs per year reportedly killed in normal years by the animal control agencies of Penang and Seberang Prain, and the Johar Baru SPCA. As in East Flores, the order was contrary to the advice of the World Health Organization, which encourages immunization via bait pellets. In early June, according to The Star of Malaysia, Johar Baru SPCA vice chair Mumtaz Fakir Mohamad asked Johar Baru mayor Datuk Bandar Datuk Hashim Yahya to investigate “a group of shooters who ignored the safety of the public” while killing dogs. But scaring people off the streets just might have been the idea. Different values are taking hold in the Philippines, also badly hurt by the Asian economic crisis, but enjoying democracy. Fifteen years of International Fund for Animal Welfare efforts against dog-eating and associated cruelty paid off in February 1998, when Philippine president Fidel Ramos signed a national ban on dogfighting, horsefighting, and dog slaughter for meat. The ban exempts dog slaughter as “part of the religious rituals of an established religion or sect, or a ritual required by tribal or ethnic custom,” in deference to the Igorots and other dog-eating indigenous peoples, who live mainly in the mountains north of Manila. But the spirit of the ban was honored recently by Judge Andres Amante, holding court in Cabantuan City, close to the Igorot strongholds, when in April a two-year-old poodle nipped Marie Therese Guillermo‘s arm, and her family demanded that the dog be beheaded for rabies testing. Instead, Judge Amante ordered the Guillermos to give Marie Therese post-rabies exposure vaccinations, and urged that the dog be quarantined and vaccinated too.
“You cannot just kill a dog,” Amante declared. “Under the Animal Welfare Law, there must be compelling reasons.” The Amante ruling was applauded by veterinarians, animal rights activists, and public health advocates as a favorable precedent for humane conduct.
	Photograph of rescued street dog courtesy T-AARF
––Merritt Clifton