The social heat generated by the Zongzhou Rowena dog bites girls has not yet subsided. Some are following events and advocating and calling for civilized dogs. However, there is an emotional, irrational voice that is beginning to flourish.
This sound is intended to “clean up” the homeless animals. Individual sub-districts have publicly indicated that they will kill stray animals.
On the Internet, a community has issued a circular on behalf of the local council, stating that “the streets will carry out operations to clean up and treat stray dogs, such as those organized by the public security services, and will carry out mass killings of strays and hounds in the jurisdiction”. To this end, the @Partner Animals Fund contacted the Chengdu Citizen Service Hotline, and was informed that there were no notices to kill dogs.
At the same time, many pets have found cases of death of pets after eating, as a result of needle holes or powder placed on their own net purchases of cat food, dog food delivery bags. According to incomplete statistics, to date more than 150 pet food enterprises have issued statements that will allow for the privacy of express packaging.
The "hate cat" and "hate dog" feelings continue to ferment in reality and online. On 17 October, a stray yellow dog from Chongqing School of Foreign Economics and Trade was captured by security officers and killed. Unprecedented, on 19 October, tourists reported a marked decrease in the number of stray cats in the tiger hill landscape in Jiangsusu County, and found a cat suspected of poisoning and convulsions.
The focus of the event discussion evolved from the original civilized dog issue to an incriminating argument about whether stray animals should be killed. It was the fault of a dog walker who sat all over the place.
The tragedy of stray animals comes from humans.
Animals, to modern humans, always seem to be the object of use. Some dogs are used in public utilities such as drug search, rescue and blinding because they are particularly sensitive and obedient. More cats and dogs are as pets, with humans.
In the book " Making pets " , it is clear how humans influence animals by directing resources and creating power.
Human creation is based on self-interest, and a standard definition of human beings is useful and harmful. It is great and useful to help human beings perform their tasks, increase productivity and provide emotional value as “good friends of humanity”; when they become homeless animals that require human regulation and management, they become harmful objects that affect the city, endanger security and need to be cleaned up.
Drug dogs are often used to detect smuggled drugs. However, it is overlooked that there are irresponsible owners behind every stray animal.
Professor Chan Yafang, Faculty of Law and Law of the University of China-South China, summarized the main sources of stray animals as three main categories of abandonment, loss and reproduction.
In a 2022 report in the Daily Rule of Law newspaper, Chan Yafang explains why the number of stray animals in our country has not increased: “In our country, cat-dog raising and breeding are out of control and disorder due to the absence of substantive laws prohibiting and punishing the abandonment of pets, inadequate law enforcement of dog management, and no one asks about underground breeding.”
Cats and dogs are unable to choose their own owners, and the existence of stray animals is an important reason for their arbitrary abandonment by irresponsible breeders.
A number of people have been so impulsive to buy and bring home because they are cute, and have given up raising for various reasons. Some breeders were not sterilized in time for cat and dog sterilization, which led to large numbers of them growing up after vagrancy, resulting in more stray animals.
The arbitrary abandonment of pets by breeders is one of the major reasons for the increase in the number of homeless animals.
And the deformed and pathological aesthetics and profit-driven needs of human beings are also a side-section of anthropocentricism.
Some specific types of pets should not have continued to breed because of their own disease genes. However, in the interest-seeking demand, many businesses continue to breed such pets for sale.
For example, the look of an ear-repeated cat is popular with individual “carers”, but in practice this characteristic is the manifestation of cartilage disease, which is ignored by some consumers and abandoned as soon as the ear-repeated cat developed.
Irresponsible pets, unbridled merchants and the lack of scientific rearing concepts have jointly created the tragedy of stray animals.
Why is it so frequent?
With the spread of news incidents of Zonta Rowena dog bites on the girl child, there is also a growing sense of mistrust in society about pet providers.
On the one hand, the uncivilized nature of the city, such as free reins, and lewdness of the pets, does exist; on the other hand, the responsibility of a small part of the uncivilized family is attributed to the entire community and even to homeless animals, who are considered potential attackers.
In extreme cases, the latter are reluctant to learn about animal habits and simply want to raze all the factors that they see as dangerous, resulting in abuses against animals, even indiscriminate poisoning. People from both positions attack each other and trust cannot be bridged.
On 16 October, the city of Zongzhou in Sichuan witnessed a Rovina bite.
In recent years, there have been frequent clashes, as evidenced by untraceable pets hitting road people, stray dogs attacking road people and uncontrolled breeding dogs affecting the lives of citizens.
There are two sides to the problem behind the frequent contradictions: on the one hand, the lack of regulation of pets and the lack of regulation of stray animals, on the other hand, and on the other hand, the accompanying facilities are not sufficient to support the formation of “animal friendly” societies.
Despite the existence of local dog regulations, there are still differences in standards in the specific regulations for dogs in front-line cities. (Refer to "The frequency of dog attacks, we learn to protect ourselves"?
In addition, although the current legislation does not specifically address pets, they are often identified as movables in property rights. This allows the pets to seek protection of their respective interests while at the same time legally regulating themselves.
In Chapter IX of the Civil Code, Responsibility for Animal Damage, responsibility for the violation is stated in chapter IX of the Code for “an animal breeder or manager who violates regulations and fails to take safety measures against animals that cause harm to others”, “an animal breeder or manager who prohibits the raising of dangerous animals, such as dogs, that cause harm to others”.
Wait by the roadside for the master's dog. (Chart/unsplash)
It is worth noting that it is never only the dog that causes the contradiction.
According to the White Paper on the Chinese pet industry, the number of urban dogs in the country is 5,119 thousand. Of these, 50.7 per cent are in second-line municipalities; 27.5 per cent are in first-line cities.
At the same time as the enthusiasm for rearing has increased, some cities are not adequately prepared for the demand of residents.
In 2022, the UPS Urban Sites Research Office, in partnership with All4Pets, the pick-up building, the AaAM (Architecure as a Medium) team, launched and completed a study entitled " We can enjoy living together with pets " , which investigated the plight of urban peters through 125 questionnaires and interviews.
In the recycling questionnaire, researchers found that the pain of urban pets was mostly concentrated in inconvenience caused by outdoor public spaces, including, but not limited to, the lack of pet-friendly devices in existing road facilities and the possibility of encountering dog-fearing road people during dog walking.
In addition, there is a lack of public space for pets in the cities, and the invisible narrows and suppresses the demand for pets. One of the interviewees in the news, Shanghai Civilization Watching the Travel and Public Safety of Pets?, stated that she lived in the Puto district and that the surrounding parks were not accessible to dogs, “generally only to go to the green areas of parks in the suburbs, such as Kaing, Songjiang, or indoor pet parks”.
The discussion is about civilized dogs.
Instead of killing animals without distinction.
The way in which a city treats homeless animals reflects the soundness of the relevant laws and regulations and the basic moral standards of citizens. The creation of stray animals is linked to the registration, reproduction, sale and management of pets.
Vagabonds, which belong to the homogenous, vagrancy species, can hardly be traced to specific subjects of responsibility for harm caused by others. Even if article 1249 of the Civil Code provides that “an animal who abandons or flees shall be liable for any damage caused by another person during the period of abandonment or flight by the original animal breeder or administrator”. However, it is not easy to find the original animal breeder.
According to the lawyer of Yingko (Tounko) Law Office in Beijing, although under the Civil Code there are relatively stable breeders, such as regular feeding of stray pets in a small district, the occurrence of a stray pet injury in such a case may, in the light of factors such as the timing of the feeding, the place where the feeding takes place and the existence of a stable feeding relationship, be held liable by reference to the Civil Code.
“However, the specific criteria for forming a breeder are not specified in the legislation in force and are essentially determined by the judge on the basis of the actual circumstances.”
To date, there is no specific legal provision for the welfare of homeless animals or animals.
From a legal point of view, the ill-treatment and killing of stray animals are difficult to discipline and are also the result of a lack of legal norms.
Although there are scattered provisions on vagrants in laws and regulations such as the Act on Animal Disease Control, the Act on the Punishment of Public Orders and the Act on Liability for Torts, the deputies of the National People's Congress, the Vice-President of the College of Agricultural Sciences of Anhui Province and the Vice-President of the China-China International Cooperation for the Welfare of Animals point out that there are still “many conflicting norms, which make it difficult to link the law with one another” and “no strict definition or regulation of the abuse of animals” and “no measures of prevention or punishment are sufficient”, these provisions have not, in substance, contributed to the suppression of the increase in the number of vagrant animals and to the abuse of animals.
In general, according to counsel, there is a lack of legal provisions for the protection of vagrant animals themselves, “even though individual civilized provisions, such as the Chongcheng City Civilization Promotion Ordinance or the Chongqing City Dogs Ordinance, would provide for `no abandonment or abuse of pets', it is difficult to regulate in practice the abuse of vagrant pets in the absence of a corresponding law for the violation of the relevant provisions”.
In fact, the Law of the People ' s Republic of China on the Protection of Animals (Draft Expert Recommendations) was introduced in 2009 and the Law of the People ' s Republic of China on the Protection of Animals against Abuse (Draft Expert Recommendations) was introduced in 2010.
“The reasons include, inter alia, the controversy over the legal status of animals, the lack of uniformity of social consensus, the difficulty of identifying the need for protection, the implementation of standards and the costs of enforcement.” Lin Dawn explained.
Animal problems are essentially human problems. The failure to regulate the rules governing dog-keeping and to increase the cost of abandoning pets has not helped to reduce the problem of stray animals or improve relations between people and animals in cities.