Overall Current Condition in Taiwan

Stray animals, especially dogs, have always been a serious issue in Taiwan. Stray dogs can be found in almost everywhere. In 2009, there were approximately 84,891 stray dogs (Fai, 2008). Most of them were in city areas. From 1998, Taiwan government announced Animal Protection Act. There is finally a regulation for animals supervised by the government. Before Animal Protection Act was established, there was no law that protected the animals and stray dogs were categorized as “garbage” because the government garbage collection teams were responsible for catching them and euthanized them by any means, drowning, burning, and starving to death. There were no animal ethic and animal welfare involved in all of the procedures. After the law was set, the government set up animal shelters in 134 counties all over Taiwan. There are regulations for the catching, keeping in the shelter, and euthanasia for those national animal shelters. However, Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan investigated all the shelters for three years and found out that the conditions of all these shelters still can’t reach the Five Freedom of Animal Welfare (Environment and Animal Society of Taiwan, 2009). Due to the large amount of dogs, most of the national shelters euthanized dogs. The average of staying in the shelter before euthanasia is 40 days (Lin, 2012). Many organization and individuals thus established private no kill animal shelters. However, many of them do have the empathy and want to save the dogs life without the knowledge of animal welfare, and the dogs even suffer more before they die. To point out the problems facing in animal shelters in Taiwan, I chose a private animal shelter- Wang Wang Dog Shelter where I have volunteered for the whole summer as my case study.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *