Taipei City councilors and animal rights activists challenged the city government's figures on stray dogs yesterday, saying that the city was using execution as the main means of taking care of the problem.
Since the city government instituted the Animal Protection Law (
"I believe that numbers can talk, but if the city government does as good a job controlling the city's stray dogs as it claims, I wonder why so many animal protection groups think just the opposite?" said DPP City Councilor Tsai Chiu-huang (
Tsai was joined by a coalition of city councilors, animal protection groups and city and central government officials.
Shen Jung-chen (沈蓉震), chairman of the ROC Animal Protection Association (中華民國關愛動物保護協會), said the stray dog control program was on the wrong track.
"The Animal Protection Law should be renamed the `Animal Execution Law' because all it cares about is killing dogs and making more money," Tsai said, adding that it costs as much as NT$8,000 to "take care of a dog" from capture to killing and cremation.
"Why doesn't the city government keep the money it spends killing and cremating and use it on neutering, since it keeps saying it has financial difficulties," she said.
Wu Saint-joe (
"The real problem of the law itself is that it treats stray dogs as lifeless refuse instead of living creatures," he said. "That explains why the budget earmarked for putting dogs to sleep is much higher than that of adoption and neutering."
Institute for Animal Health (動物衛生檢驗所) data shows that Taipei's 1999 neutering rate of domestic dogs reached 30 percent, ranking first in the nation. The city's dog adoption rate is also the highest in the nation -- up from 16 percent in 1998 to 35 percent in 1999.
The report also showed that the city had the nation's second highest number of registered dogs in 1999 -- recorded at 84,708.
But the number of the city's stray dogs which are put to sleep is the fifth lowest among the nation's 23 counties and cities -- about 800 a year.
Veterinarian Huang Jen-yen (黃建源), said more attention should be paid to neutering dogs.
"Killing may be the fastest way, but it is definitely not the best," he said. "Since adoption doesn't appeal to many people, neutering is a simpler, more humanitarian and viable solution."
Huang said the government should provide financial incentives to encourage people to catch stray dogs and get them neutered at veterinary hospitals.
Chung Chih-yi (
"If we don't curb the source of supply, we'll keep seeing stray dogs on the streets," he said.
Lin Ya-che (林雅哲), a vet, however, disagreed. "Unauthorized pet shops may not be the core of the problem. The problem lies in the ability of stray dogs to reproduce rapidly," he said.
"A better solution is to provide animal shelters free of charge to pet owners. I believe pet owners are sometimes forced to give up their pets because they don't know what to do with them."
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