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| South Korea Legislation Amendment |
| Dogs to be reclassified as livestock |
There has been a lot of activity recently about the city of Seoul’s proposal to reclassify dogs as “livestock”, thereby legitimising their slaughter as “meat animals”, despite the fact that South Korea currently outlaws the sale of dog meat.
Animals Asia has received pleas from many of our supporters and requests from the Korea Animal Protection Society (KAPS) and other animal welfare groups to lend our support to those in Korea working to prevent this.
Animals Asia fully endorses their activities and protests against this legislation, which would set back by years, the progress of all animal welfare groups in Asia working to take companion animals out of the food chain.
With this in mind, we have recently sent two separate letters in support of KAPS to the Mayor of Seoul and to the President of South Korea, strongly protesting this huge backward step and stressing its potential damage to the welfare of companion animals across Asia.
Below is the text of one of our letters – if you would like to support KAPS in this campaign please copy and forward it to:
Mayor of Seoul Mr Oh Se-hoon
Email: ohsehoon@seoul.go.kr
Address: Euljiro1, Jung-gu, Seoul, 100-744, Korea
Korean President Mr Lee Myung-bak
Email: webmaster@president.go.kr
Address: 1 Cheongwadae-ro, Jongno-gu, Seoul, Korea
If you would like to offer direct help on this issue, please contact the following animal welfare groups:
Korean Animal Protection Society
1593-19 Daemyung 10-dong
Nam-gu, Daegu City, South Korea
Tel: 82-53-622-3588 Fax: 82-53-656-3587
E-mail: kaps0127@hanafos.com
Website: http://www.koreananimals.net/ or http://www.koreananimals.or.kr/
Attn: Sunnan
Coexistence of Animal Rights on Earth (CARE)
Email: kyeowoolmom@hanmail.net
Website: http://www.fromcare.org
Attn: Ms Park So-Yeon, President
Korea Association for Animal Protection (KAAP)
Email: lwb22028@hanmail.net
Website: www.kaap.or.kr
Attn: Mr Lee Won-bok, President
On behalf of these groups and companion animals across Asia, thank you for your help.
1 May 2008
President Mr Lee Myung-bak
1 Chongwadae-ro
Jongno-gu
Seoul
Korea
Dear President Lee
Animals Asia Foundation is an animal welfare organisation working to restore respect to all animals across Asia. One of our programmes is Friends…..or Food? through which we work on the ground in China to eradicate the use of dogs and cats as “meat” animals.
As such, we are extremely disturbed by the proposal of the Municipality of Seoul released in the Dog Meat Hygiene Management Policy, to list dogs as livestock. As supporters of the Korean Animal Protection Society (KAPS) and the Korea Association for Animal Protection (KAAP), we fully support and endorse their campaign to protest this legislation.
Listing dogs as livestock for human consumption under the Korean national legislation, would make Korea the first country in the world to legalise dog meat, and would also make Korea’s President the first national leader in the world to permit dogs to be used “as food for human consumption”.
Animals Asia believes that to advocate or legislate the slaughter of dogs for consumption would legitimise the practice and undermine the great work of countries like Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand and Hong Kong that have already outlawed the practice of dog eating. In China, we are seeing a groundswell of change with an increase in pet ownership, and a huge increase in awareness of dogs as companion animals, not livestock.
Animals Asia strongly urges your government to prevent the legalisation of dog eating in your national laws and to prohibit the consumption of dog meat as soon as possible.
Yours sincerely
Jill Robinson, MBE
Founder & CEO
Animals Asia Foundation
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