Dog & cat cruelty in China merits exposure - Salon

[Number9Dream]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/03/24/animal_cruelty_china/

snip> very little has been aired about its treatment of dogs as well as cats: 2 million of them brutally killed each year for the international fur trade, according to undercover investigations done by the Humane Society of the United States.

>snip What seems particularly dismaying, though, about China's treatment of domestic dogs and cats is that these mass killings are perpetrated against two species that share our hearth and home and with which humans have had a long, familial and affectionate relationship, albeit an ambivalent one.

snip> The Chinese Companion Animals Protection Network, created in 2004, has launched a nationwide campaign to stop eating dogs and cats, making the point that many of these animals are pets, stolen from their families and shipped to slaughter.

snip> Set against the great human persecutions that China supports, the loss of these 2 million dogs and cats may seem insignificant. Nonetheless, each one of them is a life, full of consciousness and joy, as anyone who has lived with a dog or cat knows. Many of them are pets, mourned by Chinese families. It's one more shadow cast by the Olympic flame.