Chile Animal Shelter Killed 800 Dogs, Dumped Corpses











Dec. 3 - 2008 Santiago-Chile

Chilean police today found about 100 dead cats and dogs on the grounds of an organization in Santiago that promised to care for pets and strays and instead allegedly killed 40 to 50 a week.
The Benjamin Vicuna MacKenna Animal Protection Society offered a safe place for strays and unwanted pets while it searched for new owners, according to its Web site. The owners of the animal shelter illegally killed up to 200 animals a month during the four months of a police investigation, according to district prosecutor Emiliano Arias.
“Its pure, hard cruelty,” he said today at the kennel. “All the animals are in a terrible state, abandoned, without food, without water. It’s a strong case of mistreatment: dogs dying, agonizing with distemper. The focus of infection runs for several blocks around.”
Neighbors had complained several times about the smell. Some of the animals had been killed and others were allowed to die from illness.
Today’s raid found starving dogs, infested with ticks and other parasites and without access to water, Arias said. Some of the dogs were in death throes and had to be put down, he said.
As well as animal cruelty, prosecutors have evidence of health violations and the illegal exercise of a profession by people posing as veterinarians, Arias said. Dogs may be legally put down by a qualified veterinarian in the case of illness and strays may be killed to prevent a rabies outbreak, he said.
Employees Arrested
Police arrested Luis Navarro, the president of the charity, and six employees, said Rene Nunez, a sub-commissioner in the police investigations division. Navarro’s charity solicited donations from the public and charged people who brought in unwanted animals between 10,000 pesos ($14.83) and 60,000 pesos, depending on size, breed and condition, Nunez said.
“They called it a donation and said it would be used for feed and care, but it clearly wasn’t,” Nunez said today in a telephone interview from the kennel. Some of the animals had been left to die, while others had been “systematically eliminated,” he said.
There may be evidence of fraud if victims come forward to say they paid for their unwanted pets to be taken care of, Arias said.
Shelters Unregulated
Animal refuges in Chile aren’t regulated. The conditions found in Santiago are reflected at shelters throughout Chile, including the municipal dog pound in the northern city of Iquique, according to Pablo Penalosa, legal director of the Chilean animal rights group Cefu.
“The smell is indescribable,” Penalosa said in a phone interview. “The animals are in terrible condition. You can see in the kennels that live animals are in with the dead. There’s a stench of dead dogs and clearly it has been a long time since it was disinfected.”
On Mondays, employees would throw the carcasses into the Santiago town dump, Penalosa said.
There are about 220,000 stray dogs in the Santiago region, the newspaper La Tercera reported in July.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sebastian Boyd in Santiago at http://es.mc279.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=sboyd9@bloomberg.net Last Updated: December 3, 2008 15:47 EST

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1 comentario:

mademoisellealex dijo...

hola , acabo de ver tu blog y me ha encantado , una porque pienso que los animalitos son indefensos y uno debe cuidarlos y otro porque tengo una perrita y la adoro
esto no debe suceder mas, nunca mas !!!
un saludo