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Animal Rights Activists Stage Protest in Mexico City


jkgourmet

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From the Latin American Herald Tribune: (http://www.laht.com/article.asp?ArticleId=458991&CategoryId=14091)

Animal Rights Activists Stage Protest in Mexico City

MEXICO CITY – Animal rights activists staged a protest against the sale of pets in Mexico City, urging residents to adopt dogs and other animals instead of buying them.

Twelve activists took part in the demonstration organized by the AnimaNaturalis group Tuesday at the iconic Juarez monument on one of the capital’s main streets.

Two of the activists, one painted to look like a dog and the other like a cat, stood in gift boxes holding signs that urged people not to view animals as toys and to adopt pets instead of purchasing them.

The protest’s goal was to make “society aware” of the fact that animals “need time, love and lots of care,” AnimaNaturalis said.

“Trade in animals considered objects or toys grows alarmingly” during this time of the year, “and when they grow or are kept for a time, they are discarded,” AnimaNaturalis Mexico director Maria Teresa Menendez told Efe.

Parents and children should be “conscientious and take responsibility for raising pets and, in any case, it is better to adopt, neuter and care for domestic animals,” Menendez said.

Eight of every 10 dogs sold in Mexico end up in the streets, with most of them having been family pets at some point, official figures show.

Mexico City, one of the world’s largest cities, has an estimated 3 million street dogs that end up being killed in shelters or the victims of human cruelty. EFE

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Those figures are shocking, to say the least. 8 out of 10 dogs sold as pets are later abandoned on the streets by their families?

3 million street dogs in Mexico City alone? Staggering numbers... A change in attitude is seriously overdue in these parts.

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  • 2 weeks later...

We very much need a change in the attitudes on pets, but it's a big chore as dogs are looked on here very differently than say the usa. I think it's even worse here (mexico state) than df. Packs of dogs run the street, having puppies anywhere. You find dead ones on the street all of the time. They are very malnourished and fight over scraps. People will not have them neutered or spayed, as they do not consider it natural, but they will turn them out on the streets to fend for themselves. We had a veterenarian come in at calixtlahuaca but he went under, nobody would take their dogs to be fixed.

Cats are rare, they do not survive.

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Well, bless them for trying...I think they have to figure out how to make it socially unaceptable...difficult, in a country where huge stadiums are filled with people hooraying and hoorahing while a bull gets tortured to death.

I was having a conversation just recently where someone casually mentioned that his daughters had recieved two baby kitties as gifts, but then they grew up to be cats so his wife "dropped them off". The guy picked up on my horrified expression but it was too late...friendship over. Ugh.

This problem would have a chance at going away if it was taclkled like littering in the U.S....dropa piece of trash on the ground and you become an instant social pariah, My son (he's 29) still remembers the wooden popsicle stick I threw out the car window when he was 5. He has never forgiven me. He learned the same way I did...

I started kindergarten in 1964 and I can still sing the litterbug song and remember the tv comercials and school campains. We all learned that way, along with the reinforcment of our parents,,,and when a concept is driven into your head that way you never forget it.

So, too bad the Mexican govt. is still reinforcing old cultural values where animals are concerned...like the bullfights. I wish that if they can't be made illegle, then at least make them fair, yeah? .

When I was a kid you could still get live chicks dyed the color of the grass in your Easter basket... ever wonder what happened to those chicks? My husband got one when he was 5 and was so excited he squished it the moment it was handed to him...I think that chick tradition has been outlawed now in the U.S.....sometimes culture and tradition is not all it's cracked up to be.

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We had the same type of culture when I was growing up. Kittens and puppies were routinely drowned to keep the population down. Dog were fed soups with veggie peel bread and sometime meat. They would get shot if they killed chickens or rabbits and so on.

It is not that way any longer so things change. They will change in Mexico, it just take a long time.

Bullfights are now banned in Catalogna so things change.

I have indigenous friends who are buying dry dog food for their dogs in Oaxaca but I also was asked by an indigenous woman who stayed at my house why I was feeding the dog , dog food. She could not believe her eyes.

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