Hong Kong busts expose scams, wildlife traffic, & dog-and-cat meat trade
Merritt Clifton posted: " Criminals don't stop at just one type of animal & human exploitation HONG KONG; HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam––Recent busts in Hong Kong brought crime, rabies, wildlife trafficking, illegal immigration, and the dog and cat meat trade together as n"
Criminals don't stop at just one type of animal & human exploitation
HONG KONG; HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam––Recent busts in Hong Kong brought crime, rabies, wildlife trafficking, illegal immigration, and the dog and cat meat trade together as never before––and more may soon follow.
"Law enforcement agencies in Hong Kong have arrested four asylum seekers and an illegal immigrant at a suspected unlicensed restaurant operating out of a flat that allegedly served dog and cat meat," South China Morning Post reporters Danny Mok and Jiang Chuqin opened on March 1, 2024, describing the most recent of a six-month series of strikes at clandestine commerce between Vietnam and Hong Kong involving both cruelty to animals and threats to public health.
(Beth Clifton collage)
77 pounds of suspected frozen dog and cat meat
"Officers seized 77 pounds of suspected frozen dog and cat meat," wrote Mok and Chuqin, "as part of a joint operation carried out by the Agriculture, Fisheries & Conservation Department, Food & Environmental Hygiene Department and police.
Arrested at the scene were the 50-year-old chef, a 43-year-old woman, a 27-year-old man, and a 16-year-old boy. Mok and Chuqin did not identify the fifth arrestee.
Believed to have come from Vietnam, the suspects "had been serving cuisine prepared with suspected dog and cat meat in the flat for six months," Mok and Chuqin said.
Cat meat trade in Vietnam. (Soi Dog Foundation photo)
Illegal in Hong Kong since 1950
Both the sale and the consumption of either dog or cat meat have been illegal in Hong Kong since 1950.
"The commercial slaughter and sale of dog meat has been prohibited on the mainland since May 2020," Mok and Chuqin noted, "with the policy taking effect a month after Shenzhen and Zhuhai introduced their own citywide bans on the consumption of dog and cat meat."
The possibility that the suspected dog and/or cat meat might have come from Vietnam raised the further concern that rabies might have come with any Vietnamese animals brought alive for slaughter, or with recent Vietnamese immigrants who slaughtered dogs and cats while still in Vietnam.
The rabies virus does not survive after an infected body cools off, but the dog and cat meat trade has been recognized since 2009 as a major rabies vector in Vietnam.
Vietnam only two months into 2024 has already had 18 human rabies deaths, Tuoi Tre News of Ho Chin Minh City reported on February 29, 2024. Vietnam experienced 82 human rabies deaths in 2023, up from 70 in 2022.
"In 2023," Tuoi Tre News said, "the national vaccination coverage rate against the deadly virus among dogs was a mere 50%," well below the 70% minimum vaccination rate necessary to prevent a rabies outbreak from spreading.
A study published by the peer-reviewed journal Science in September 2023, "Sick as a dog? The prevalence, politicization, and health policy consequences of canine vaccine hesitancy," by Matt Motta, Gabriella Motta, & Dominik Stecula, indicated that the U.S. rate of dog vaccination against rabies may have dropped as low as 53%, but unlike Vietnam, the U.S. does not have a large population of free-roaming dogs among whom a rabies reservoir may persist.
Swiftlet. (Beth Clifton collage)
Poached swiftlet nests
Hong Kong police meanwhile ended 2023 and opened 2024 by making two of the biggest busts of the illegal traffic in poached swiftlet nests, used to make bird's nest soup, a traditional Southeast Asian delicacy of no actual nutritional or medicinal value.
The first of the two busts, on December 20, 2023, found 331 pounds of birds' nests stashed aboard a tour bus intercepted at the Shenzhen Bay control point on the border between Hong Kong and mainland China.
The second, on January 4, 2024, "confiscated nearly 500 pounds of bird's nests worth $1.2 million in U.S. dollars, hidden in a truck headed to mainland China," the South China Morning Post reported.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Dried seafood
"A 52-year-old woman, director of a consignor company, was also arrested following the confiscation of the goods at the Kwai Chung Customs House Cargo Examination Compound, the South China Morning Post continued.
"The smuggled items, which were destined for Vietnam, were detected when a container underwent an X-ray examination."
Boxed with the birds' nests were several hundred pounds of dried seafood.
Convicted wildlife trafficker Yang Feng Glan. (Beth Clifton collage)
Increased attention to smuggling
Chinese authorities, including in Hong Kong, appear to have been paying increased attention to smuggling of animal products since early 2020, when the Chinese government responded to the then just emerging COVID-19 pandemic by banning the trade and consumption of wild animals.
How big the traffic remains is anyone's guess, but an analysis of more than 9,200 Chinese court convictions for illegal hunting recorded between 2014 and 2020, conducted by researchers from Sun Yat-sen University in southern China, Princeton University, and the University of Tennessee found that more than one-fifth of all known amphibian, reptile, bird and mammal species were being poached, both for food and for use in traditional medicines.
Only 5% of the convictions accounted for 90% of the more than three million animals of 670 species involved in the criminal cases, the researchers found.
The findings were published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature in October 2023.
(Beth Clifton collage)
Ten weeks in jail
The March 1, 2024 dog-and-cat-meat restaurant raid came just over a year after a similar bust in the Yau Ma Tei district of Hong on February 9, 2023 led to the April 2023 conviction of a 40-year-old man for possession of frozen cat meat.
The man was sentenced to serve ten weeks in jail.
In November 2023 a Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries & Conservation Department investigation of alleged online sales of dog meat led to the discovery of "a sophisticated scam that tricked victims out of about $166,000 in U.S. dollars, after they shared personal details through a fraudulent mobile app," reported Stacy Shi for The Standard.
Beth & Merritt Clifton
The fraudulent app offered receipts purporting to be from the Hong Kong Homeless Dog Shelter.
"The shelter's founder, Angela Chan Ka-yee, said on Facebook that she had reported the bank account as stolen," Stacy Shi wrote.
In addition to targeting customers for dog meat, police said, the scammers "were attempting to raise public attention and lure animal lovers, who might have downloaded the app to trace the identity of the seller," who at last report remains at large.
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