BOOKS: Dog Meat Trade In The Philippines
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, December 2005:
Dog Meat Trade In The Philippines
revealing corruption, conspiracy, government inaction
Linis Gobyerno, Inc. (P.O. Box 1588, 2600 Baguio City,
Philippines), 2005. 139 pages, spiral bound.
Dog Meat Trade In The Philippines will jolt readers
unfamiliar with the dog meat industry. The most shocking aspect of
this comprehensive report, however, should be that it is the third
in a series of book-length updates by Linis Gobyerno, detailing
non-enforcement of the 1996 Philippine ban on dog slaughter for human
consumption.
“This is not a national phenomenon,” the foreword
stipulates, “but a problem concentrated mainly in the Cordillera
region,” where under the thin legal cover of an exemption granted to
the indigenous Igorot tribe, non-Igorots conduct a clandestine
traffic in dog meat worth as much as $290,000 a month.
“As an Igorot, I vehemently do not accept dog-eating as my
culture,” writes Dog Meat Trade In The Philippines contributor Bing
Dawang. “I was not raised to eat dogs, and dog meat is not a
regular part of my diet, nor has it ever been.”