PRESS RELEASE (for immediate release) 6 February 2004
AVIAN FLU, SARS - AND THE ANIMAL VICTIMS
The spread of avian flu in Asia, has seen the slaughter of tens of millions of birds - who have either been infected with the virus, or who have been slaughtered to prevent its spread. The current methods have apparently been implemented not only to slaughter the massive number of birds, but to consider operator safety and protect workers who are performing the slaughter from being infected, whilst handling infected birds.
However, according to Animals Asia Veterinary Director, Dr. Gail Cochrane, the slaughter methods are both cruel and unacceptable - with no excuses even for those countries lacking regulations on animal welfare. "The most humane method, under the circumstances, would be carbon dioxide gassing, which was carried out in Hong Kong during the first outbreak of avian flu in 1997. However, this method, which is recognised in most developed countries as a humane method of mass euthanasia, is probably being ignored, due to a lack of technology, expertise or trained staff."
Humane euthanasia is often the last of food animal problems in Asia. With China and the rest of Asia demanding meat as never before, squalid farms are now keeping thousands of animals in appalling conditions and the future looks even more bleak, as these countries are expected to double their demand for meat by 2020. Industrial scale commercial farming in Asia is taking its toll on both human and animal lives - and cruel live wild animal markets across the region are mushrooming and providing a breeding ground for bacteria and disease.
The rapid expansion in the consumption of wild and domesticated species, with little or no regulations governing their capture, breeding, confinement or slaughter has resulted in new and unexpected impacts on human health and pressure on an already fragile environment.
Today, Animals Asia continues to call for a permanent change to a system which is now strongly implicated with the spread of diseases such as SARS and bird flu - and a system which has ridden roughshod over the plight of the animals themselves.
The Animals Asia team has been documenting the appalling conditions at live animal markets in Asia for many years, repeatedly calling in vain for their closure. Still today, despite the warnings of SARS and despite the Chinese Government banning the sale of wild animals for food, Animals Asia investigators recently found deer and wild boar with broken leg bones and missing limbs (having been obviously trapped in the wild), in markets in southern China. Dogs and cats and other domestic species in these markets continue to be cruelly caged and slaughtered in the most gruesome and disgusting way.
Animals Asia once again appeals to the Governments of Asia to close all live animal markets, to end the trade and consumption of wild animals and dogs and cats and to urgently address the appalling conditions which millions of livestock animals are forced to endure.
With China still reeling from SARS, the latest study of the deadly virus by Hong Kong scientists in December 2003 concluded that the "growth of wildlife in markets in Guangdong [over] the past 15 years has provided an ideal platform to facilitate inter species virus transmission from animals to humans. Such factors could even directly trigger a zoonotic disease outbreak."
World Health Organisation spokesperson, Peter Cordingly, also recently offered food for thought: "It might be time, although this is none of WHO's business really, but the bottom line is that humans have to think about how they treat their animals and how they farm them, how they market them - basically the whole relationship between the animal kingdom and the human kingdom is coming under stress".
Jill Robinson MBE, Founder and CEO of Animals Asia said: "Intensively farming animals in their own excrement, ignoring the illegal trapping and transportation of wild species from region to region, cruelly confining and slaughtering wild and domestic animals without any thought for their welfare or suffering, is an unconscionable way for any Government in Asia to behave today. Something's got to give - and there cannot be a more salient message that something is going horribly wrong, than when people are dying as a result of the way in which their country's animals are being treated."
Ends.
For further information, please contact:
Jill Robinson MBE - Founder & CEO, Animals Asia Foundation, Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 2719 3340 or Tel: (852) 2791 2225 or Mobile: (852) 9095 8405
Email: jrobinson@animalsasia.org
Dr. Gail Cochrane - Veterinary Director, Animals Asia Foundation, Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 2791 2225 or Mobile (852) 9197 9720
Email: gcochrane@animalsasia.org
For stills please contact:
Annie Mather - Media Director, Animals Asia Foundation, Hong Kong
Tel: (852) 2521 0982 or Mobile: (852) 9425 7429 or
Email: amather@animalsasia.org
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Annie Mather
Media Director
Animals Asia Foundation
Hong Kong
Find out more about the historic China Bear Rescue by visiting the
Animals Asia Foundation website at:
http://www.animalsasia.org