“One-dog Policy” in China: Honey, I shrunk the Doberman

This legal-height dog was arrested for standing on hind legs in defianceof a Chinese government edict banning dogs over 35cm (7”) high.

Dog-owners in China now have to gather clandestinely in back-alleys under cover of darkness if they want to chat about their pets. Limit: one dog per family only… and no taller than 35cm (7"), otherwise you get fined about $830 (Australian). FunkyPix2 is approaching the Hongkong Stock Exchange to float a $2 start-up Company which will offer a service of removing dogs' legs, replacing them with small wheels to reduce their height. (Erect ears remain a problem, though... unless we can kick-start a fashion for heavy dog-earrings.)

The official line, ostensibly, is that China wants to combat the increasing incidence of Rabies. Being a Professional Cynic, my first question would be:- Is getting rabies from a Pekinese or Pomeranian somehow safer than from a Doberman or Alsatian? Might there, in fact, be more behind this "logic" than meets the eye?

Many un-registered dogs have already been impounded from poorer owners who cannot afford the heavy AU$37 registration fee. Hundreds of thousands of un-innoculated stray dogs have already been put down. Hey, SELL SELL SELL those Pooper-Scooper shares in your portfolio… FAST.

So why is all this happening? Is Rabies the real reason, or is there a darker Machiavellian underbelly to these new laws?

For starters, FunkyPix2 suggests that there may soon be an increase in "K9-Brand" export meat to Vietnam. Unthinkable? Not at all - we’ve observed many truckloads of caged dogs heading east over the Thai border through Laos then to Vietnam, viz:

There is more meat available on larger dogs, and smaller dogs eat less food.
30,000 dogs per month are eaten in Vietnam alone.

Alternatively, could China's strategy be to prevent wastage of dog-food that might otherwise be better processed and fed to people instead? For a hungry country, there’s some merit in that, but the buck doesn’t stop there. Speaking of bucks, have you considered what might happen to all those cast-off canine carcasses...? You mean to say ...er, ...you haven’t yet made the link to those 138, 000 tins of cat-food that China recently exported to England? We humbly suggests to Her Majesty’s Customs & Quarantine Dept that they randomly sample tins of that cat-food for traces of the Rabies virus. (Comically, the cat-food was unloaded at the port of Felixstowe). Me-OW.

Some Chinese cats are reportedly suffering an increase in stress
disorders as a result of the growth in the fur trade.

Harrods might also consider conducting DNA tests on its imported designer fur coats and furry children's toys. Could this be the solution you've long been seeking to your persistent allergy problem?

A typical dog-butchery in China.
Well? We do the same to lambs and calves... don’t we?

Feeling queasy yet? Wait, there’s more! We note that China executes at least 7 thousand prisoners every year (10 thousand, according to Amnesty International). That's more than all other countries in the world put together - and many for extremely minor crimes or mere political dissidence. There are even mobile execution vans that wait outside court-rooms.

It’s been alleged that such mass-killing is a deliberately concocted state strategy in order to plunder victims' bodies of transplantable organs, especially hearts and livers. Hearts and livers fetch whopping prices on the American underground medical market. We're talking six figures. Incidentally, that's why Chinese prisoners are shot in the head rather than the heart.

At this point FunkyPix2 feels compelled to ask: What happens to all the wasted body bits that are NOT transplantable? There's already such a dire shortage of cemetery space that authorities have been mulling the idea of vertical burials. Hey, why would they 'waste' scarce gravesites on 'criminals' when there's quick money to be made?

Should I continue...? You may have noticed there’s been a sudden recent surge in convictions of hundreds of Chinese white-collar officials on charges of corruption. A fantastic commercial opportunity, yes/no? Ditto the cosmetics industry, which highly values various body-parts of thousands of foetuses resulting from forced abortions under China's "One-Child" policy. Also in Russia.

Heaving yet? It gets worse. You definitely won’t want to peek at this dog and cat meat website... WARNING - EXTREMELY HORRIFIC PHOTOS. In fact, just as ghastly as you witness every day in your local butcher shop, but some are simply awful. Welcome to reality.

As a grimly gothic footnote to all this frothy fun, some years ago the nasty Nestlé Corporation decided to begin marketing its babyfood in the newly-opened Vietnam as part of its Globalisation plan. They sold virtually none – except to a few Europeans. The reason was simple:- the management hadn’t realized that the word “Babyfood”, translated directly into Vietnamese, literally means “food-made-from-babies”. Uh-huh, mmm... maybe there’s more to that imported Catfood story than meets the eye….

NEWSFLASH Update - December 30, 2006: More organ trade evidence, this time from India. The Empire continues...