Photo courtesy of http://memock.wordpress.com
If you don’t know what this is, it is simply a truck that collects dogs while giving the owners buckets in return. My mate over at Life in Rural Thailand has written about it before, having seen the bucket truck many times and also has a short video of a dog truck in Laos.
Photo courtesy of http://memock.wordpress.com/
The dogs are usually collected by people in smaller pick-up trucks and then transferred to larger flat bed trucks that hold hundreds, up to thousands of dogs crammed into cages.
Photo from AFP.
Today I was reading an article in The Bangkok Post Newspaper titled, Three men charged with illegally transporting 2,000 dogs to Vietnam.
The above picture is of the truck they found in the Nakhon Phanom district carrying around 600 dogs, and later they stopped another truck in Si Songkhram district carrying around 1,200 dogs.
The dog traffickers have been charged with crimes such as, the illegal transport of animals, unlicensed trade in animals, the transport of dogs to an area under rabies monitoring, cruelty to animals, not having dogs vaccinated and lacking documents to certify their vaccination.
Photo courtesy of http://memock.wordpress.com/
Article 381 of the Thai Criminal Law states that a person “committing an act of cruelty or killing an animal by mean which inducing unnecessary torment shall be sentenced to one month in jail or fined one thousand baht or both.” But what is “cruelty” in Thailand. If the above picture doesn't constitute cruelty, then what does?
But what mystifies me is that dog trafficking goes on every day, of every week of the year here in Thailand. Trucks cross the Thai border into various countries while officials turn a blind eye as their pockets are being well padded.
Why all of a sudden have these three people been targeted?
Obviously they have not slipped an envelope under the table, or they stood on the toes of another contractor who is well connected or something along those lines for sure.
It isn’t illegal to transport dogs or cats in Thailand, but you need to have all the correct paperwork, but the trucks carrying these dogs each day would not have this for sure, there is no way known they would have and if they did it would all be forged.
Eating dog meat isn’t illegal in Thailand. It has been going on for decades, many say it is a small area in Thailand that consume dog meat but from what I have read it seems more widespread than a few remote districts in Isaan, amongst the poorest of the poor.
I don’t object to people eating dog meat, each to their own. But I do object to the dogs being stolen and treated inhumanly.
Way back in 2003 a then newly elected governor of Sakhon Nakhon, Panchai Borvornratanapran had promised in his campaign to rid the well known area of the dog slaughterhouses and sale of dog meat. But a protest by one of the most well known dog meat areas being Ban Tha Rae made him back peddle on his promises.
Back then it was estimated that between 300 – 400 dogs were killed each day in Tha Rae supplying around 4,000 kilogrammes of meat which the villages claimed they ate but in truth it was being shipped across the country to dog eating lovers and across the border.
But why are there so many stray dogs in Thailand, if these dog traders take thousands of dogs each day across the borders and also to Thai slaughterhouses. The answer is simple. In some villages the animals are virtually allowed to breed with the knowledge they will be sold to the dog trade. It brings a small income to poor villagers.
Dog skin fetches around 100-150 baht, but the people who have let the dogs breed, see maybe 20 baht if they are lucky or collect their buckets and then sell them on.
So after reading this article in the paper today and then seeing the outrage it has caused, bewilders me.
Have all these people just starting to cry foul and animal cruelty had their heads shoved so far up their ass they didn’t know this was going on before!
I again say, if people want to eat dog meat, best of luck to them but it needs to be regulated and the laws followed. Sadly it is known the dog meat trade brings a lot of money in to the hands of already wealthy pigs, who just keep building their sty bigger and bigger while the small players continue to wallow in shit.
All of this is what I call selective policing. This is something that Thai police seem to be good at.
It is like when they have the cameras tag along and they raid shops that have counterfeited goods, fake gear like the designers bags, shirts, watches and so forth you find all over Thailand.
They raid this shop for a reason; the owners have not played the game, as simple as that. Usually the shop next door, and across the road are all selling fake goods as well. So when I see a police raid and they plant the story in the paper I laugh and wonder what the shop owner did wrong.
The human trafficking of Burmese and Laos’s workers into Thailand, who are mistreated terribly, many times corruption at borders allow these people to cross into Thailand or village headman have ahandful of money jammed into their hands. They are sold onto people who treat them worse than a Soi dog. Everybody knows it happens and if the police and immigration really wanted to crackdown on all of this they could for sure, but there are big players at hand and the “mafia style gangs” that are often referred to in newspapers.
Like prostitution in Thailand. Make it a legal profession. Make the girls register, have regular checkups, pay taxes and so forth. Stop this idiocy of prostitution doesn’t exist. Sex tourism must be a massive money earner for Thailand. So tax it. Try and make the industry safer for the girls, get rid of the crime that is rife throughout it.
But back to the bucket trucks, tomorrow more trucks just like this will cross borders of Thailand with a load of dogs cramped in to small cages, many will die before reaching their destination but this will continue.
Tomorrow more dogs will die in the slaughterhouses of Tha Rae and other areas surrounding like Nakhon Phanom and Sakhon Nakhon. Will these places be stopped from doing this? No.
These three guys have stood on toes as simple as that.
A quote from a person who has seen these trucks many times on their travels in remote Thailand and through Laos.
"How can these idiots act on a tip off?"said MeMock.
"Every day of the year at, at least three border crossings, trucks crammed full of dogs cross from Thailand into Laos en route to Vietnam. These trucks are not covered, they are seen by every immigration official and policeman in the area. To act on just one tip off is hilarious."
I couldn’t agree anymore. It is hilarious this is a “one off” and they needed a “tip off”.
Brunty
2 comments:
good report, Brunty. but what i don't get is how people get all upset about something happening to dogs that happens to all order of food animals. for example, we've all seen pigs loaded onto trucks and they are so crammed together you can't put a sheet of paper between them. here in Taiwan, one of the VN restaurants gets their ducks delivered in cages so short the ducks can't stand up. no one thinks twice about it. but as soon as dogs are crammed into a truck on their way to the dinner table, everyone is upset about it. i agree with you that they (or any other animal) should never be abused but food animals are regularly treated in a manner that people wouldn't approve of for their pet animals.
MJ, I agree that if people want to eat dogs then good for them.
And as you said, animals that are bred and end up on people dinner tables are mistreated, especially in developing countries.
The same here with pig trucks, they are packed on teh back of small pick-ups, jammed in like sardines but they are just pigs most Thais would think!
I like you don't agree in the cruelty side of it, do it humanely as possible and I couldn't care less what the meat is.
It has been happeneing for so many years, I just don't understand why now it makes headlines and a big deal.
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