Could life get any worse for the hundreds of thousands of stray dogs roaming Taiwan's streets?
While a few lucky ones are plucked from a life of misery to be adopted by pet-lovers, others are dying from hunger while in the care of government-run animal shelters, according to animal protection activists.
PHOTO CHU YU-PIN, TAIPEI TIMES
The World Alliance for Stray Animals last week filed a suit against the Council of Agriculture's (COA) Bureau of Epidemic Control and Quarantine, accusing it of neglecting its responsibilities in caring for stray dogs.
The suit was prompted by an inspection of a government-run shelter in Hualien County by the activists.
"To our disbelief we found that some stray dogs, despite being cared for by the shelter, had starved to death," said Chen Cheng-yu (陳正育), representative of the pressure group.
"Judging from the experience of our visit, we strongly question how much effort the animal shelter has put in to really caring for these stray dogs."
Chen said the Animal Protection Law (
"During that time, the shelters have full responsibility in making sure these stray dogs are well-cared for and not neglected," Chen said.
After the seven days, the dogs are killed if they have not been adopted.
According to Chen, this animal shelter, which can house up to 180 dogs at a time, receives NT$2.5 million a year from the COA to care for its stray dogs. Chen said the COA budget for all Taiwan's animal shelters was NT$80 million.
"With this tragedy of stray dogs dying of hunger," Chen said, "we wonder what the money [from the COA] has really been spent on."
However, Chen Yu-hsin (陳雨新), head of the COA bureau being sued, disputed the activists' version of events.
He said the COA only spent NT$10 million on all shelters in Taiwan, with the remaining funding coming from local governments.
He said the death from starvation of the dogs at the Hualien shelter was the result of the irresponsible behavior of the shelter's staff, rather than corruption.
The shelter has already been fined NT$50,000 for violating the Animal Protection Law, the COA's Chen said, and two of the staff had been fired.
Despite reports of mistreatment in Hualien, the outlook for stray dogs in the rest of the country is not always so bleak.
Taipei City, for example, has instigated a plan to encourage people to adopt dogs off the street as pets.
"To make it convenient for pet-lovers to adopt these stray dogs," said Yeh Chi-ming (
"So far, [the scheme] has been well received by the public."
The scheme is part of a wider drive to reduce the number of stray dogs in the city, which includes informing the public about its responsibilities in registering dogs and neutering them.
The COA recently commended Taipei City for the measures it has taken to deal with stray dogs, which seem to be bearing fruit.
According to Yeh, the number of stray dogs in the city has fallen steadily from 70,000 in 1998 to 11,859 last year.
The city also leads the country in dog registration, with 50 percent of dogs being registered, 23 percentage points higher than the national average.
Yeh said there were several reasons for the decrease in the number of stray dogs in the city.
"More people are interested in adopting stray animals and becoming aware of the importance of sterilizing and registering their pets," he said.
Registering a dog ensures that authorities can find the legal owner if the dog runs away or is abandoned, as all registered dogs have identification chips implanted in them.
While Chen of the animal protection activists commended Taipei City for its actions in controlling the stray-dog population, he questioned whether dog-tagging was really working.
"How effective can it be when there are four different electronic tagging systems and not every animal shelter is equipped with scanning systems to decode all the different kinds to identify information contained on the implanted chips?" he said.
Chen, who estimated the number of stray dogs in Taiwan at between 500,000 and 600,000, said a change in public attitude would be needed to reduce the number.
"Other than sterilizing stray dogs, the key to bringing down the number of stray dogs is to educate everyone to respect life," he said.
"Only through the idea of respecting life will pet owners be less prone to abusing or abandoning their pets and the welfare of animals in general [be protected]."
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