China’s Culture of Cruelty

China’s long history of animal abuse is back in the spotlight as one Chinese county indiscriminately massacres every dog in sight—more than 50,000 in total—some right in front of their families. This and other appalling atrocities—such as feeding live sheep and chickens to tigers in zoos and skinning conscious animals, including dogs and cats, for their fur, which is then exported to the West—take place because China has no animal protection laws.

Tens of Thousands of Dogs Are Being Clubbed, Poisoned, and Electrocuted

In a hideously cruel response to an outbreak of rabies in late July, authorities in Mouding County in Southwest China ordered the killing of more than 50,000 dogs, including 4,000 who were immunized against the disease. Officials clubbed many animals to death in the street right before their guardians�?eyes. Animals who were not beaten mercilessly died equally violent, gruesome deaths by poisoning or electrocution.

PETA’s offices have been inundated over the years with calls from people around the world who are outraged by China’s dog “exterminations.�?Eyewitnesses have noted that many dogs have died slow, agonizing deaths in these mass slaughters, which illustrate the nation’s lack of adequate animal control plans. PETA’s offers to assist Chinese officials in implementing such plans—in order to avoid drastic, widespread killings—have not been accepted.

China’s Shocking Dog- and Cat-Fur Trade

Chinese authorities pay citizens a 60-cent bounty for each dog whom they kill. Surprised that this nation places a price on the head of “man’s best friend�? Don’t be. Dogs and cats are killed for their fur in China.

It’s not just a bad dream. PETA recently conducted an undercover investigation into the Chinese dog- and cat-fur trade in order to show people what the industry is so desperate to hide. Even our veteran investigators were horrified by what they found: Millions of dogs and cats in China are bludgeoned, hanged, bled to death, and strangled with wire nooses so that their fur can be turned into trim and trinkets.

Think that’s nightmarish? If you’re buying fur, you might be wearing the skin of the very species of animals that you share your home with. Chinese fur is often deliberately mislabeled as fur from other species, and it constitutes more than half the amount of finished fur garments that are imported for sale in the United States. Because dog and cat fur is mislabeled so frequently, the bottom line is that if you wear fur, there’s no way of knowing whose skin you’re in.

China: The World’s Top Leather-Exporting Country in 2004

With the world’s largest population of sheep, lambs, goats, and kids, China’s massive role in the global skins trade also includes its position as the world’s most prolific exporter of the hides of these animals as well as those of cows. In 2004, Chinese leather constituted more than one-third of all exported leather in the world.

Other skins come from more familiar faces. Hundreds of thousands of dog and cat skins are traded in Europe each year; it’s estimated that 2 million dogs and cats are killed in China each year in order to meet this demand.

Many of the millions of animals slaughtered for their skins are skinned alive. Buying leather directly supports factory farms and slaughterhouses, because animals�?skins are the most economically important byproduct of the meat industry. Every time that you buy a pair of leather shoes, you sentence an animal to a lifetime of suffering. Instead, you can choose from hundreds of styles of nonleather shoes, clothing, belts, bags, and wallets. Fashion should be fun, not fatal!