Please Help!

This is about the call to help save dogs from Dog Meat Trade. Everyone, please help. You don’t have to spend or buy anything, no need to travel anywhere. All you have to do is go to this link and sign in your name. That’s it. It will take no longer than 5 minutes of your time. This online petition ends on June 30, 2007. They need to obtain at least 50,000 signatures by JUNE 30, 2007 in time for the Congress session on July 2007. I think the list has a long way to go because there are only around 29,300 signatures as of today. Just 3 more days to go, but still 20,700 more signatures needed.

Look at these dogs. They need our help now.

A Brief History of the Dog Meat Trade

Traditionally, dogs were sacrificed and their meat eaten when a family was faced with bad luck, or when a death was witnessed. It was the belief that a dog’s spirit protected and guarded the spirits of the living family. However, this was an infrequent practice. Greed and corruption has evolved the ritual into a massacre of over 500,000 dogs a year in the Philippines as a commercial industry. Although most Filipinos detest the practice and do not eat dog meat, it is still concentrated in areas in and around Baguio City and the Cordilleras Region.

What needs to change?

Because this barbaric commercial industry provides a steady flow of income not only to the traders but to officials and police officers, the dog meat trade remains unscathed from the Welfare Act. However, House Bill 2991 is currently pending in the Committee on Revision of Laws that provides a stiffer penalty to dog meat traders. Introduced by Representative Francis Escudero, the creation of the bill was based on the need to upgrade an Act that, as noble as the objectives of the law are, the traders remain elusive because the penalty is unrealistic. The penalty must be upgraded.

Dogs have lots of different purposes. Being abused, slaughtered, and eaten is definitely not one of them.

Woof!