7 I am so upset about the changes to the livestock bill that | ✨ 🪐 ⚡

7

I am so upset about the changes to the livestock bill that I am not sure I can put forward a coherent argument but I will try - unlike cattle, there is currently no "market" for dogs other than 1) a market for breed dogs (hence the large number of illegal and backyard breeders in India) and 2) a market for dog meat in Nagaland (High Court has just lifted ban). What this new bill is doing is creating a legal market for dogs ...but dogs are not bred for slaughter so where do we think they are going to come from ?

Street dogs is the answer and I do not believe it's a coincidence that several municipalities in North India have just said they will open large dog pounds to ostensibly implement better ABC (animal birth control) but the likelihood that they will be become sources for legal exporters is high in my humble opinion. not only that, every Tom, Dick and Harry can now catch dogs and become a supplier to legal exporters. Do we not see a huge problem with that, whether we are animal lovers or not ?:

Stiff regulations because we all know that illegal activities will trump/ignore/circumvent any regulations made to prevent misuse of the law. All the research shows that culling/removal of dogs from an area does not reduce the #of dogs over time and the only answer is sustained ABC - Jaipur was a model case study where an estimated 60-70% of stray dogs had been sterilised before the municipality pulled the contract for ABC and it all slowly went downhill ...all we will be doing with this bill is giving the municipalities a way not to do their job...and encourage inhumane catching by anybody and everybody because now there will be a market for live dogs.

Over and above all this, where is our compassion for these animals - livestock is treated as a commodity which means there are very few controls on how they are transported ....if we have to export, let's export only meat, not live animals ...at least the animals die here and we can imagine that the regulations/export quality monitoring will ensure humane killing methods in India ...but we will have little control over how they are transported and killed once they leave our shores !