Dear World Organization for Animal Health (OIE),
Please watch this video! https://youtu.be/_ZVQjgGb4RQ
The $2 billion dollar-a-year South Korean dog and cat meat industry, which extinguishes the lives of approximately two and a half million dogs a year for meat or gaesoju, a dog wine or broth, and thousands of despised and doomed cats for so-called “health” tonics or goyangyeesoju, and soup, operates in a sordid and illicit world where farmers and butchers kill with frightening impunity in the most abominable fashion. Dogs are killed with high-voltage electrocution, which takes anywhere from thirty seconds to three minutes, hanged, and even beaten to death at the request of customers who believe the meat more tender and tastier the greater the suffering (one of the most pernicious of myths), and that the so-called medicinal properties are enhanced. They are most often killed within sight of their cage mates. They are then thrown into a tub of boiling water, often still alive, and then into a rotating drum for the removal of their fur, and finally blow torched. At Moran Market, South Korea’s largest open air-market for dog meat, dog carcasses are on display next to the cages of live dogs. Cats are often bludgeoned and thrown into boiling water while still alive. At the farms, dogs are fed germ-infested, rotting, and fermented human leftovers, a health risk to both the dogs and those who eat them. In South Korea, dogs and cats’ lives are short and ferociously heartless until they tremble no more at the hands of their slaughterers as cage mates look on. Read more: http://skdogcatcampaign.com/
In addition to the unspeakable cruelty perpetrated dog meat trade is also a serious threat to human health. Dog farms are hotbed for infectious diseases. Since there is no disease control these dogs suffer from diseases from highly infectious and transmittable bacteria, virus, ectoparasites, endoparasites, and fungi. Out of 165 dogs bred at a dog farm in Seoul area, 83 dogs(50.3%) were infected with endoparasites and 23 dogs(20.2%) were infected with heartworm.
Puppies suffer from malnutrition because they are fed rotting food waste (infested with pests such as rats, cockroaches, flies..) after being weaned. In order to hide from the law and civil complaints, most dog farms are located in remote areas where sun is scarce causing vitamin D (necessary for bone growth) deficiency.
Locked in cages for months, dogs are bored and stressed from being packed with other dogs and constant stench. Stress hormone weakens their immune system and they become susceptible to hormonal diseases such as hyperadrenocorticism.
Antibiotics, antidiarrheal and steroid are used to control distemper, parvovirus, various respiratory and digestive diseases but abuse of drugs led to tolerance against antibiotics and relevant innate problems. In some cases, 10 times the normal doses were being administered by the farmers themselves without the supervision of veterinarian.
Large dose of heavy metal that accumulated in the organs and caused internal body malfunction is detected in dog meat. Heavy metal is assumed to have been accumulated from eating leftover food waste and low-end feed (remains from slaughter houses). Many serious and often life threatening diseases can be attributable to this unsanitary and inhumane dog meat industry and they include animal bites and scratches, Bubonic Plague, Camphylobacter, Cutaneous larval migrans, Giardiasis, Lyme Disease, Psittacosis, Rabies, Salmonellosis, Shigellosis, Visceral Larva Migrans, Anthrax, Bebesiosis, Brucellosis, Colibacilosis,… Read the extensive research report by KARA (Korea Animal Rights Advocates) https://koreandogs.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/KARA-Dog-Meat-Report_English-1.pdf
Please watch these videos and see what is going on inside S. Korea at this moment:
S. Korea’s Dog Meat Trade: Eating sick dogs and former pet dogs: http://youtu.be/A3WNJFd1Cl0
S Korea’s Dangerous Health Food – Inconvenient Truth About Dog Meat 1 of 2 with English Caption: http://youtu.be/vHB3uwB9kyA
S Korea’s Dangerous Health Food – Inconvenient Truth About Dog Meat 2 of 2 with English Caption: http://youtu.be/foHCBNllT8w
See more undercover videos from S. Korean dog market, slaughterhouses here: http://dogisdog.org/bbs/board.php?bo_table=video
Read the reports by CARE (Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth): http://www.careanimalrights.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/sh.pdf
Please contact the S. Korean delegate and investigate this important issue and urge them to comply with the rules of the World Organization for Animal Health as they are members:
Dr Taeyung Kim
Director General, Animal Health Division, Livestock Policy Bureau, Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
Government complex Gwacheon
88 Guanmun-ro, Gwacheon-si
Gyeonggi -Do 417-719, S. Korea
There is no appropriate animal-protection legislation to prevent the animal cruelty currently taking place in S. Korea. As someone who believes strongly that animals should not be treated in this way, I request to you, OIE, to investigate and address this issue immediately. Please urge S. Korean Government to strengthen the Animal Protection Law to prevent animal cruelty and to introduce basic animal-protection regulations. It must also provide penalties for violations and ensure that mistreated animals can be legally seized from abusers and given immediate refuge.
I request that OIE strongly urge S. Korean Government to create an enforceable law to ban the torture, killing, sale, and consumption of dogs and cats.
Please don’t let the S. Korean government get away with this outrageous cruelty to companion animals.
Thank you for your attention!
Sincerely,
Your name
