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Hapcheon Mayor Moon Joon-Hee

Below is Hapcheon’s response to our petition: Hapcheon, South Korea, Shut down the illegal dog meat farms, slaughterhouses and markets.

Please take action and send your petition through e-People today. If they have to address and respond to hundreds, thousands or hundreds of thousands of petitions on this issue; then perhaps they will finally be put under enough pressure to take action to bring this horrific animal cruelty to an end.

Our campaign is still effective because now they are aware that the eyes of the world are watching what’s going on in their county’s dog meat industry. Let’s keep up the pressure by taking action!

Below is our comments on the satisfaction survey regarding their response:

We are not satisfied with the response to our petition, due to the following key reasons:

it fails to substantiate and evidence what direct actions the Hapcheon is taking to enforce existing laws to disrupt the entrenched dog meat trade in South Korea. We have not been provided, in this response, with any evidence of any direct actions taken by the Hapcheon, such as recorded information relating to inspections, monitoring and actual enforcement action taken against violators, in relation to dog meat farming, slaughterhouses and businesses selling dog meat and dog meat products (such as dog elixir and dog soju);

it fails to show what actions the Hapcheon is taking with regard to proposing amendments to existing legislation or bringing in new legislation to address and end the dog and cat meat trade, and

it fails to formally acknowledge the existence of the illicit dog and cat meat trade within South Korea and the problems this poses to human health, animal welfare and organized crime, which has been widely documented by both domestic and international NGO’s and animal charities (and has also been raised as an international area of concern by many western governments with South Korea and its diplomatic missions).