The Taipei City Government’s animal shelter might be falsifying data to conceal that it is euthanizing stray animals despite having a “zero euthanasia” policy, a Council of Agriculture official said.
Earlier this month, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Taipei City Councilor Chen Lee-hui (陳孋輝) accused the municipal shelter in Neihu District (內湖) of putting down seven puppies based on incomplete tests for canine parvovirus infection.
Chen said the deaths of many of the 116 dogs the shelter put down for parvovirus infection from last year to July this year may have been unjustified.
Council Animal Protection Section chief Chiang Wen-chuan (江文全) said he is aware of the issue and there are more problems affecting Taipei’s animal control policy.
In July, animal protection groups began questioning the city’s implementation of its “zero euthanasia” policy and they may have expressed their concerns to an elected representative, Chiang said, adding that the council had separately investigated the data of the Taipei animal shelter and found discrepancies.
Before June, officials had concluded that the city had been loading the records of the shelter’s animal population with misleading or falsified data for the past two to three years, he said.
Although the city said it had stopped euthanizing animals since last year, the municipal shelter had during the same period reported an abnormal increase of animals that were removed from its care by “miscellaneous causes,” he said.
Shelters define “miscellaneous causes” as reductions of the population due to reasons other than euthanasia, natural death or adoption, usually referring to animals that either have escaped or have been released after being neutered, he said.
The city reported 37 animals removed due to miscellaneous causes in 2014 and 91 in 2015, Chiang said.
Last year, the shelter reported that 169 animals had been removed from its care due to miscellaneous causes and the figure increased to 190 this year, Chiang said.
“We have to wonder whether the Taipei City Government has been labeling euthanized animals as having been removed from its shelter due to miscellaneous causes,” he said.
National statistics show that puppies comprise the bulk of animals that die of natural causes in shelters, but Taipei’s records have been a notable exception since last year, he added.
In 2014, Taipei’s municipal shelter reported that it lost 587 puppies and eight adult dogs to natural death, which was normal, Chiang said.
However, a year after that, the city reported no natural deaths among puppies and 233 natural deaths in adult dogs, and so far this year, it has reported no puppy deaths and 114 adult dog deaths, he said.
“The city councilor said seven puppies might have been put down for no good reason. Actually, from January to September this year, zero puppies have died of natural causes or left the shelter’s care for miscellaneous causes. Looking at the data, I simply cannot see what they did to the record of those puppies,” Chiang said.
The no-kill shelter the central government promotes does not preclude euthanizing sick animals for humanitarian reasons, he said, but “doctoring data is not the same thing as implementing a zero euthanasia policy. It is causing suffering to the dogs.”
Municipal shelters in Taichung and Kaohsiung have medical units that consult outside veterinarians on when to euthanize sick animals for humanitarian reasons, animal rights advocate Antony Ni (倪京台) said.
This improves the integrity of judgement when it comes to euthanasia and reduces the psychological burden on public shelter veterinarians, Ni said.
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