Groups urge better animal shelter conditions: Taiwan

Animal rights advocates yesterday demanded that the Council of Agriculture (COA) change the prevalent act of exposing stray cats and dogs to disease at their animal shelters and putting them to sleep without treatment.

In response, Hsu Kuei-sen, chief of the Animal Husbandry Department under the COA, maintained that conditions and operations were sound at the shelters and invited the demonstrators to visit them and witness for themselves.

Over one hundred protesters demonstrated in front of the COA building yesterday, pushing the council to improve conditions at the 38 government-owned animal shelters across the country.

The event drew animal lovers from across the country, including members of People's Republic of Cat and Dogs, Kaohsiung Concern Stray Animal Association and the Tainan City stray animal institute.

The protesters chanted to see Hsu, simultaneously demanding that he come out of the office building and for him to step down as chief of the COA department of animal husbandry.

According to advocate spokesperson Huang Tai-shan, in the past 12 years over 1.14 million strays have been placed in the government-owned shelters; of the number, 960,000 did not make it out alive.

Huang accused the shelter workers of allowing healthy cats and dogs to enter the shelter, only to be exposed to diseases, after which they would be put to sleep.

In short, their practice equals murder, the animal advocate charged.

Further, the shelter only attempts to find the stray animal's owner within the first 12 days of it's arrival at the rescue center. However, once those 12 days are up, Huang said the workers will immediately put the animals to sleep because the shelters do not provide pet adoption services.

He continued that commonly the shelter would capture the strays immediately upon receiving the phone call, yet would put the animal to sleep without even bothering to scan for microchips.

Supermodel-turned-actress Sonia Sui also joined the demonstrating, expounding on the importance of all life forms and her dismay when she discovered that some shelters euthanized animals without meeting the 12-day wait.

Hsu, for his part, invited the protest leaders inside the COA offices for further discussion. Claiming that the COA was very willing to communicate, listen, and improve where necessary, Hsu maintained that to his knowledge, both shelter conditions and operations were sound, especially in Yilan, Taichung City, Taipei, Koahsiung and Tainan. He encouraged the protesters to visit the listed shelters at any time.

The COA chief also added that much has been done to combat the spread of disease at the shelters. He went on to describe how volunteers in the Taoyuan shelters would hug the dogs as they slowly passed away. Hsu denied knowledge of any cases where animals were put to sleep prior to the 12-day benchmark.