Three dog abusers have been jailed with the help of members of Network for Animals’ Philippine anti-dog-meat team. As a result of their action on 10 September 2015 the Calatagan police force, 100 miles south of Manila, was able to arrest three dog meat traders.
It is a significant blow to this illegal trade in which dogs, many of them people’s pets, are placed in brutal conditions like the tiny wire cages pictured, stuffed to breaking with poor suffocating pets, unfed, without water, unable to move.
As Brian Davies, Founder of the Network for Animals, points out, the Philippine climate leads to a year-round baking summer heat, and an almost constant 80-90% humidity. “What these poor dogs have to go through on the way to a human’s dinner plate, I believe is one of the worst forms of torture to exist on this earth, and one that I have personally dedicated more than 30 years to ending, ” he said.
The traders had been monitored for around two months by the Network for Animals operatives and their informants, until the slaughtering operation was eventually located in the middle of a sugarbeet field, 30 miles south-west of the traders’ home.
The remote choice of venue meant there was great difficulty apprehending the traders, and highlighted the lengths they go to to evade capture.
As this is one of the first raids the local police force has attempted to prosecute, the Network for Animals’s veteran team leader has temporarily moved to the area to assist the police with the legal issues surrounding the case, already preventing it being thrown out of court on a technicality.
Heartbreakingly, the bodies of 18 slaughtered dogs were also discovered and have been laid to rest in the area.
To perform the monitoring, carry out the raids, and generate the extensive legal work involved in changing the lives of dogs in the Philippines needs support. Please make a generous donation today, and help bring this vile trade to an end.
