Animal welfare is an emerging interest in Vietnam (please stop eating domestic cats)

A Vietnamese website (VN Express) says that animal welfare is an emerging interest among Vietnamese citizens. It's a good title and it made me smile. However, I immediately thought about cat meat which is still very much on the menu in Vietnam. So clearly, a concern about animal welfare is only emerging and is not yet established otherwise there would be no cat meat in Vietnam.

Animal welfare. Photo: Pixabay.

Apparently cat meat is technically illegal in Vietnam but you can buy it all over the country. It is referred to as "baby tiger". The business is inherently cruel and I'm told that over 1 million cats are killed annually to be eaten by Vietnamese citizens.

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Please stop eating domestic and stray cats. These are meant to be loved pets not livestock. And often they are killed in unregulated ways which is inherently cruel. The business does not square up with the headline on this page.

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Despite that, there are some positive signs that animal welfare is more of a concern to Vietnamese citizens. There was a story about a man setting fire to his cat. Obviously an utterly outrageous and desperately cruel incident. But it shocked and outraged Vietnamese citizens. They expressed disbelief that a person could be as cruel and as evil as this. The cat survived and has been treated.

The perpetrator of that desperate act of cruelty apologised on Facebook. He admitted that there was no excuse for it. Comment: obviously true. There was no need to even state that. I stress: it did not need stating because it is obvious. The online community refused to accept his apology. They continued to criticise him for his inhumane act. The cat has been named Dilo. The community rallied around to help fund his treatment.

And it even got to the point apparently where the store where this man worked was forced to shut down recently (for a while?) because of protests of some sort. Perhaps they were online protestations. The man lives in Hanoi by the way.

There was another interesting story about an overreaction by the authorities when they euthanised (I hope genuinely humanely) 15 dogs and cats belonging to a person who contracted Covid. I guess they were destroyed under a zero tolerance policy of some sort. The officials' actions drew condemnation from Vietnamese citizens and the international community. The measure was deemed to be too extreme because there are better alternatives.

The local authority later admitted that they had acted too hastily and promised to rectify the shortcomings in the future.

The petition was commenced online which urged the Vietnamese authorities to come up with veterinary guidelines to protect companion animals during Covid.

And in another incident, somebody was killing pets in Thao Dien, Saigon’s expat hub. The residents of the government owned apartments demanded an investigation. It was found that the pets had been poisoned in a targeted manner.

An expert, Wayne Capriotti, on the country's pet industry and the founder of the magazine Me Thu Cung (Love Pets) confirmed that over the last five years companion animal ownership has increased dramatically. He puts it down to humanising pets. This is a good thing because it places companion animals at a much higher status; as family members which provides them with protection.

No Covid vaccinations for pets because they aren't a priority

NEWS AND COMMENT: We, the public, know that lions, tigers and bears have been given Covid vaccinations. This tells us unequivocally that there is a Covid vaccine for animals, specifically zoo animals. This is because zookeepers who have been infected with Covid transmit the disease to captive animals at their zoo. This is important because the animals are valuable. They are an asset to the zoo and that asset needs to be protected with a vaccine.

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Free pet care clinic Seattle 2020. Ruth Fremson / The New York Times

However, despite the knowledge of an effective vaccination for animals, vaccines are unavailable for dogs and cats. This is simply because, on my understanding, that dogs and cats are de-prioritised.

The experts think that cats and dogs do not transmit Covid to their owners and other people living in their homes. One veterinarian, Dr. Elizabeth Lennon, working out of the University of Pennsylvania said that she is frequently asked when a vaccination will be made available for domestic cats and dogs.

The answer is that pets are simply not a priority according to experts. Dr. Lennon said that:

"To date, there hasn’t been any documented cases of dogs or cats spreading the virus to people."

And Dr. Will Sander, a veterinarian at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign said that the risk of the disease spreading in pets is so low that any vaccine would not be worth giving.

RELATED: Can domestic cats transmit Covid?

This is a question of economics and finance and whether people can be bothered to vaccinate companion animals. At the moment the answer is that it is not worth vaccinating them.

My research does not specify absolutely that the vaccines given to zoo animals can be used on domestic animals. However, I can't see any reason why a vaccine used on a big cat like a tiger can't be used on a domestic cat. This is because they are exactly the same anatomically with some very minor differences excluding the size difference which is obvious. 😀.

But the point is that they are the same and they have the same physiology, so I would like someone to tell me why the vaccines made available to zoos in America can't also be made available to veterinarians. Is that such a big ask?

Even if the vaccine is de-prioritised for pets, it is hardly a great difficulty or burden to distribute it a little more widely to veterinarians.

Source: Seattle Times.