Asia

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, April 1998:

With the help of Hilary Koprowski,
inventor of the oral rabies vaccine used successfully
against fox, raccoon, and coyote rabies in Europe
and the U.S., the Tamil Nadu Veterinary and
Animal Sciences University in Chennai, India, is
reportedly close to perfecting oral rabies vaccines to
protect both humans and street dogs. The human dose
would be embedded in a spinach roll; the dog dose
would be embedded in tobacco, which street dogs
avidly consume but humans rarely keep down even if
they do swallow some by accident. Chennai was previously
scene of a major humane innovation when in
1968 the Blue Cross of India introduced the Animal
Birth Control program there, now so successful in
so many cities that the Animal Welfare Board of
India in November 1997 declared as a national goal
the abolition of animal control dog-killing by 2005.

The Korea Animal Rescue Association on
February 22 opened the first Korea Animal
Protection Center at Yangju-Kyunggi-Do, according
to a fax received from the KARA head office in
Seoul. KARA may be contacted c/o Kyunggi-Do
Yangju-Gun Nam-Myun, Sangu-Ri 410-1, 482-870;
telephone 82351-868-2851; fax 82351-62-2259.
Animal control data from various Southeast
Asian nations supplied by John Wedderburn
of Hong Kong indicates that while homeless dogs and
cats are often badly treated, the scale of the problem
is small by U.S. standards, partly because dog and
cats are not as often kept as pets, and there are
accordingly fewer owned animals contributing litters
to the surplus. Hong Kong, with about the same
human population as New York City, killed 5,539
dogs and 5,366 cats in fiscal 1996: 25% of the New
York volume. S i n g a p o r e, with about the same
human population as Chicago, killed 3,602 dogs and
6,281 cats: 20% of the Chicago volume. Singapore
either returned to owner or adopted out 1,172 dogs,
for about the same lifesaving rate (24%) as Chicago.
J a p a n, with just under half as many people as the
U.S., killed 722,132 dogs and cats in 1995. The U.S.
killed about seven times as many