Animal Slaughter - Dog Slaughter House

Barn Tarae is a village in Sakon Nakorn, a province in southeast part of Thailand - 647 kilometers from Bangkok. With the population of merely 8,303 (in 1999) compare to 1,090,109 in the province and 61 millions in the country, Tarae managed to repeatedly bring shame to Thailand. An exclusive career of the residents in Tarae is dog slaughter. Sakon Nakorn and Thailand as a whole has been a target of international criticisms regarding exploitation of dogs and cats for meat and skin trades. Actually, only dogs are the main victims of meat and skin trades in Thailand. Cat slaughter is said to be in Philippine. Nevertheless, Thailand and China are two major exporters of dog skin, according to the US Humane Society finding in 1998.
Poverty and tradition are often used as excuses for dog slaughter business. At an average of 400-500 dogs a week, the number is preposterously too high for local meat consumption. The real reason behind dog slaughter business is Dog Skin trades. Dog skin worths 3 dollars or 125 baht a piece in export. Based in Tarae, caged pickup trucks, capable of carrying approximately 50 dogs, would travel as far as Chiang Rai border in the north and Surajahtanee in the south to collect dogs. The collectors would offer a small plastic bucket in exchange for a dog from villagers. The dogs would then transport back to Tarae and kept in a darkroom, without food and water, before sending to a slaughterhouse. An estimated 22,000 dogs were cruelly slaughtered in 1997. The killing method is hitting the head with a club and stab the neck. The number is expected to increase as the trade continues.
   Attempts to introduce dog meat as a menu were made. Dog-meat stalls along the road to Sakol Nakorn have become common sights. People in Sakol Nakorn are passive to the situation. The general Thai public misperceives it as a local preference or beef substitute for the poor. When the media brought up the issue, the government would then insignificantly responded. Requests for advise and information from animal welfare groups was sometime made, but no progress by the authority has ever been achieved. The existing laws neither allow nor prohibit dog slaughter, and there is no animal welfare legislation in Thailand. There is only a clause in the Criminal Laws Article 381 stating “ 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.” The term “cruelty”, however, is not defined, and no conviction has ever been made.