The stray dog problem will never be resolved until the public learns to stop dumping unwanted pets, academics said at a public forum on animal welfare yesterday.
Most people assume that stray dogs are proliferating because the vast majority of strays are not neutered, said Fei Chang-yung (
Debunking the myth, Fei said that a lack of food sources and the high incidence of canine distemper meant it would be hard for puppies to survive long past weaning without human assistance.
"It's true that strays breed, but most puppies they give birth to simply starve or die of illness," he said. "Most new strays are not born homeless but are abandoned."
To back up his claim, Fei pointed to research conducted by the Council of Agriculture (COA) showing that 16 percent of stray dogs in the country tested positive for rabies antibodies -- a sign that they had been inoculated against rabies at some point.
"We need to take care of the problem at the source -- - abandoned pets," Fei said. "Until that is done, all secondary efforts to control the stray dog population, including euthanization, TNR [trap, neuter and release] and rehoming will fail."
"We have gone from having no laws to enforce to having unenforced laws," veterinary science professor Yeh Li-son (
Yeh was referring to animal welfare statutes that call for pet animals to be registered and chipped, a measure which, if enforced, could lower the rate of abandoned pets.
Su Bi-ling (
Dogs are euthanized after a certain number of days in the shelter, or if they have skin disease over a certain percentage of their body. Su said she would like to see that changed to take a dog's age, general health and friendliness into account.
"Some aged dogs are better off euthanized early because they will never find another home," she said. "However, young dogs that can make good pets should be given another chance even if they have some treatable skin disease such as folliculitis."
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift