BOOKS: Please Help Stop The Illegal Dog Meat Trade In The Philippines

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, May 2003:

Please Help Stop The Illegal Dog Meat Trade In The Philippines
by Freddie J. Farres, executive director of Linis Gobyerno, and associates
Linis Gobyerno [Clean Government], P.O. Box
1588, 2600 Baguio City, The Philippines;
<www.linisgobyerno.org>), 2002. 46 pages,
stapled.
No price listed; donation recommended.

Long aware of dog-and-cat-eating in the
Philippines, but unaware of any Philippine group
fighting it with the vigor shown by Korean
anti-dog-and-cat-eating activists in recent
years, we were surprised on Christmas Eve 2002
to learn from an article by Vincent Cabreza of
the Philippine Inquirer that seven people had
been arrested in Baguio City during the previous
weekend for inhumane treatment of more than 120
dogs who either died or were found dead in
transit from local dogcatchers to restaurants.
On April 9, 2003 Mike Guimbatan Jr. of
the Philippine Times reported that 20 dead dogs
were found and 40 live dogs were rescued from
illegal dog meat traders in Baguio City during
the preceding week.

A week later, May Ann Cacdac of The
Philippine Sun-Star wrote that, “Eighty-three
dogs were intercepted and rescued from slaughter
by personnel of the Criminal Intelligence and
Detection Group,” responding to a tip from
Melchior Alipio of the Political Animal Welfare
Lobby in Baguio City.
Suddenly Philippine activists are pushing
police to enforce the 1997 law prohibiting
dog-eating by anyone except members of the Igorot
tribe, who claim it is part of their religion.
The Philippine anti-dog-and-cat eating campaign
is especially active in Baguio City in part
because of Linis Gobyerno, self-described as an
“anti-graft, corruption prevention, and
detection group organized in May 2000″ with
“close to 500 active members, based primarily in
Baguio City and Luzon.”
Founder Freddie J. Farres is “de facto
publisher,” he says, “of The Junction, the
hardest hitting newspaper” in the Baguio City and
Luzon areas. He is also the primary author of
Please Help Stop The Illegal Dog Meat Trade In
The Philippines, a modestly produced but
well-researched exposé of the traffic that names
alleged offenders, including officials who fail
to implement the 1997 law in a meaningful manner.
Whether Linis Gobyerno organized against
dog-and-cat eating and then found itself engaged
in a larger struggle against graft and
corruption, or whether it simply discovered that
the dog-and-cat meat industries attract graft and
corruption, the outcome is that growing numbers
of people born and raised in Baguio City see
dog-and-cat eating as vices that their community
must get rid of in order to progress in a healthy
manner.
The Linis Gobyerno campaign not only is
not directed in any manner by foreigners, but
has words that rarely appear in mass circulation
media for some of those who have conducted
campaigns in the U.S. and Europe on purported
behalf of Philippine dogs and cats.
Farres is especially contemptuous of an
International Wildlife Coalition representative
whom he claims enlisted Linis Gobyerno help to
raid an illegal dog butcher on June 21, 2002,
and then “euthanized” the rescued dogs,
allegedly having a child hold them as they were
given lethal injections.
Farres also alleges that the Political
Animal Lobby, a project of International Fund
for Animal Welfare founder Brian Davies, joined
in a well-publicized raid on a dog butcher soon
after the IWC incident, but did not vigorously
pursue prosecution. The charges were eventually
dropped because the raid was done without a
search warrant.
“If you think that stinks, there is
more,” Farres writes, explaining that the dogs
who were reportedly rescued just before Christmas
2002, and a similar number who were “rescued” a
few weeks earlier, either never reached the
Baguio City veterinarian, or left the premises
without their arrival being recorded. Farres
speculates that the dogs may have been sold back
to the butchers.
Despite the corruption, Farres believes
Philippine dog-eating (and cat-eating) can be
ended, except among the Igorot, within three
years. He believes the major necessary element
is adequate funding for local organizations,
including Linis Gobyerno, so that they can hire
the help they need to ensure effective
prosecutions and meaningful sentencing.
Dog-and-cat butchers, an obviously
brutal lot, may take violent exception to the
content of Please Help Stop The Illegal Dog Meat
Trade In The Philippines, and the newspaper
exposés that preceded it, as might some
corrupted officials. Farres’ only visible friend
in an inside-the-back-cover photo is his pit bull
terrier. He could use a whole lot more
friends–and so could the dogs and cats he is
defending.