Hong Kong: no-kill beacon to the world or hub of grand scale scamming?

The 121-year-old Hong Kong SPCA has a hard-earned great reputation,  but about half of the purported no-kill shelters in the New Territories do not even exist

HONG KONG––Is Hong Kong a beacon of hope for no-kill animal control campaigns worldwide,  including in the U.S.,  or is Hong Kong actually the hub of scamming in the name of no-kill on an even bigger scale than is increasingly evident in the U.S.?

A city of 7.5 million people,  comparable to the population of New York City,  divided among Hong Kong Island,  the Kowloon peninsula,  and the New Territories,  Hong Kong might actually be both,  depending on where one looks.

The good news

The good news is that Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon peninsula have for decades had few visible street dogs and a relatively low visible presence of feral cats.

No rabies has been detected among Hong Kong animals since 1987,  and no human rabies cases of local origin since 1981,  although a woman named Lorna Capayan,  37,  died from an undiagnosed case of rabies in September 2001.  Capayan is believed to have been infected by a dog from mainland China.

Having long enforced a ban on pit bulls and other high-risk breeds,  Hong Kong has had no dog attack fatalities and only six disfiguring dog attacks since 2007,  of which ANIMALS 24-7 has record,  including three by Rottweilers,  two by other pets,  and only one by dogs running at large.

Further good news is that the Hong Kong rate of dog and cat control killing,  all animal shelters combined,  may be as low as 1.2 per 1,000 human residents,  if the available data can be trusted.  This is well below the rate achieved by most so-called “no-kill” cities.

The bad news

The bad news begins with shaky data.

Hong Kong shelters,  serving about the same human population as New York City both then and now,  killed 5,539 dogs and 5,366 cats in fiscal 1996:  25% of the then-New York City volume.

The Hong Kong SPCA,  hoping to make the city no-kill by following the San Francisco model,  then turned animal control over in 2001 to the Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries & Conservation Department.

The Hong Kong SPCA refocused on doing about 10,000 spay/neuter surgeries per year and facilitating circa 1,100 dog and cat adoptions per year.

The Hong Kong SPCA posts updated numbers annually.  The Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries & Conservation Department does not.  In 2010 it acknowledged intake of 5,800 dogs and 3,557 cats,  rehoming 852 dogs and 205 cats through animal welfare organizations including the Hong Kong SPCA.

Numbers go backward

Two years later the Hong Kong Agriculture, Fisheries & Conservation Department reported having euthanized 6,561 dogs in 2011,  a substantial increase,  euthanizing another 5,289 dogs during the first 11 months of 2012.

These,  unfortunately,  appear to be the most recent statistics available.

The most recent available Hong Kong dog and cat population data is even older.

According to the Hong Kong SPCA,  “In a thematic survey conducted by the Census & Statistics Department in 2005, it was estimated that 286,300 households (12% of all households) in Hong Kong had some 524,800 pets.  Of whom,  197,900 (37.7%) were dogs,  99,200 (18.9%) were cats,  and another 98,300 (18.7%) were turtles and tortoises.”

New York City easily had four to five times as many pet dogs and cats,  which in turn explains the lower Hong Kong shelter killing volume.

Lots of no-kill shelters––on paper

Inadequate data,  in short,  makes impossible ascertaining whether Hong Kong has really made progress against dog and cat overpopulation over the past 15 to 25 years.

The numbers,  whatever they are,  have simply not been published,  if even tabulated.

What is possible to ascertain is that Hong Kong now officially has more than 75 registered animal shelters,  counting government facilities,  the Hong Kong SPCA,  and other nonprofit organizations,  for a very favorable ratio of approximately one per 100,000 human residents––assuming all of those shelters actually exist and are actually taking in homeless dogs and cats.

The U.S.,  by comparison,  has about one animal shelter per 85,000 human residents.

But only about 2,500 of the estimated 4,100 U.S. animal shelters purport to be no-kill.

In Hong Kong,  only the Agriculture, Fisheries & Conservation Department shelters and the Hong Kong SPCA admit to not being no-kill.

The New Territories

The Hong Kong SPCA euthanized 77 dogs and 268 cats in fiscal year 2022-2023,  easily achieving the 90% “live release rate” promoted by the Best Friends Animal Society and Maddie’s Fund as the yardstick for being “no-kill.”

But the easiest way for a shelter to be “no-kill” is to either admit only healthy young animals who can easily be rehomed,  or simply not take in any animals at all.

This appears to be happening in the New Territories,  the portion of Hong Kong adjacent to the Chinese mainland,  forcibly annexed by the then-British government of Hong Kong in 1898-1899 at cost of killing about 500 village landlords and family members,  who formed militias to resist annexation.

Making up about 86% of the land in Hong Kong,  the New Territories house about four million people:  more than half of the total Hong Kong population.

“Surge in stray & abandoned dogs”

Reported Fiona Sun for the South China Morning Post on July 27,  2024,  “A surge in stray and abandoned dogs in the past six months in new development areas of Hong Kong’s New Territories has prompted lawmakers and animal welfare advocates to call for more support for displaced pets.

“Lawmaker Edward Lau Kwok-fan,  of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment & Progress of Hong Kong said that conditions had worsened.

“He said animals were left behind by owners who moved to public flats or emigrated,”  while the closure of warehouses and garages for redevelopment left “guard dogs previously used at the sites abandoned.”

Paws Guardian Rescue Shelter intake quadruples

Kent Luk Ka-jeep,  founder of the Paws Guardian Rescue Shelter,  confirmed the lawmaker’s words.

“The rescue group received three to four cases of abandoned animals a week over the past half a year,”  summarized Sun,  “compared with three to four cases a month previously,  he said.

“He added that his group had already reached full capacity in handling the animals, with a total of more than 90 dogs and about 100 cats at its Yuen Long shelter and two other centers.”

Unofficial “no-kill” rescue organizations similar to shelterless rescues in the U.S. have clandestinely accommodated some of the abandoned animals,  sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

Hoarders

On June 10,  2024,  Ivy Tse,  a director of the House of Joy & Mercy,  another of the reputable New Territories animal shelters,  told Oscar Liu of the South China Morning Post that she and volunteers had recovered the remains of 71 cats from the ashes of a tin-roofed house in the New Territories where the Fire Services Department had already reported finding 40 dead cats in cages.

“The premises had once been used as a dog playground,”  last known to be active in 2022,  Liu wrote,  and had also been used as a pet hospice.

The fire was attributed to an electrical short circuit.

The case recalled the Stray Wonderland debacle in April 2019,  culminating in the arrest of the 62-year-old man who run the purported no-kill facility in the New Territories,  after sixty-six dogs and 30 cats were rescued from the premises,  where the skeletal remains of at least ten others were found.

31 of 60 alleged shelters do not exist

Meanwhile,  reported Vivian Au of the South China Morning Post on July 2,  2024,  “Examination of satellite images and site visits by the Liber Research Community,”  a nonprofit organization “which focuses on land and development research,  suggested that 31 of 60 successful applications over the past five years” for permits to operate animal shelters in the New Territories “involved shelters that only existed on paper.”

Said Liber Research Community investigator Brian Wong Shiu-hung,  “We discovered that about 80% of the 60 successful applications were in agricultural areas,  and 31 of the sites were suspected to be non-operational.

“This made us suspicious that some applicants may have had no intention of running animal shelters and were using this as an opportunity to convert farmland into brownfield sites,”  Wong explained to Au.

What is a “brownfield”?

“Brownfields” are properties used for industrial purposes associated with a high risk of pollution.  Hong Kong land legislation allows agricultural land to be used for animal shelters;  “animal shelters” can then be redeveloped or sold for other uses.

In effect,  incorporating a nonprofit,  no-kill “animal shelter” has become a form of money-laundering,  most easily done if no animals are actually involved.

The Liber Research Community findings suggest that the actual ratio of animal shelters to Hong Kong human residents may be one per 200,000,  or worse.

Hong Kong SPCA opens a New Territories s/n clinic

The Hong Kong SPCA hopes to alleviate the situation somewhat by opening the SPCA Jockey Club Centennial Center in Tsing Yi,  the biggest animal hospital in the New Territories,  expected to be chiefly a spay/neuter clinic.

The name of the SPCA Jockey Club Centennial Center reflects that the nonprofit Jockey Club,  founded in 1884,  has a legal monopoly on horse racing and sports betting in Hong Kong,  and is the largest funder of not only the Hong Kong SPCA but also many other Hong Kong charities.

Formed in 1903,  the Hong Kong SPCA began animal sheltering in 1923,  becoming the hub of a far-flung network of western-style animal shelters founded by British and American missionaries.

Hong Kong SPCA had four regional affiliates

Affiliated missionary humane societies,  basically charitable animal hospitals,  operated before World War II in Guangzhou,  Shanghai, Inchon,  and Seoul.

Typically the missionary societies worked parallel to,  and sometimes in partnership with,  traditional Buddhist-run temple animal sanctuaries,  which fed and sheltered stray dogs,  cats,  and cast-off working animals,  but usually did not offer veterinary services.

The 1937 Japanese invasion of China ended that era,  among the last documented episodes of which was the rescue of multiple animals from the front by 15-year-old Valentine Holdosi.

(See Through enemy lines to save his animals.)

World War II

The Shanghai SPCA survived at least two years under Japanese occupation.  In September 1939,  the American Humane Association periodical  National Humane Review reported,   the Shanghai SPCA successfully prosecuted two men for fraud after they were caught selling dog meat and cat meat as “rabbit.”

The case is of enduring note because it indicates that eating dogs and cats was not socially accepted at the time,  even under wartime conditions,  and became more widespread under Communism after World War II,  when keeping pets was for several decades officially discouraged.

Then managing shelters in both Hong Kong proper and Kowloon at the outbreak of the war,  the Hong Kong SPCA was obliged to suspend operations after Hong Kong fell to the Japanese invaders in December 1941.

Rebuilding

Hong Kong SPCA director R.N. Swann had already returned to Britain.  Swann,  after World War II military service,  returned to humane work with the Royal SPCA of Great Britain,  including a stint heading the Cairo SPCA in Egypt,  then an RSPCA subsidiary.

Other members of the Swann family also maintained long involvement with the RSPCA.

Swann’s successor in Hong Kong,  Dorothy Ho Tung,  a major funder of the Hong Kong SPCA at least since 1923,  was apparently the sole survivor among the pre-war Hong Kong SPCA staff and volunteers who remained in Hong Kong.  She died in 1949,  two years after restarting the Hong Kong SPCA,  frustrated by an apparent lack of progress among the post-war conditions,  but had made a more successful restart than she realized.

Posthumous accomplishments

Only one year after Dorothy Ho Tung died,  in 1950,  the reconstituted Hong Kong SPCA had enough influence to pass legislation prohibiting the sale of dogs and cats for human consumption.

Clandestine dog and cat consumption continue,  but Hong Kong SPCA anti-cruelty inspectors routinely patrol meat markets and facilities selling live animals.

Dog and cat meat sellers have been successfully prosecuted in high-profile cases in 2007,  2008,  2015,  and earlier in 2024.

Two years after Dorothy Ho Tung died,  in 1951,  the Hong Kong SPCA resumed hospital operations.

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