Dogs & China

This is an email I recently received from the author of Merle's Door (Ted Kerasote), please check out the link.

Dear Readers and Friends:
China not only has a poor record when it comes to human rights. It also treats dogs and cats with unusual cruelty. I've written an op-ed on this topic, which appears in the March 23, 2008 issue of Salon.com. You can read it by clicking on this link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/03/24/animal_cruelty_china/index.html
As always, thank you for your many kind comments about Merle's Door and your continued support.
With warm regards,
Ted Kerasote

I wrote back...what can we do? This was his reply:

What can we do? If we're stockholders in a company that does business in China, we might attend a shareholders' meeting and suggest that the company make one of the requirements of sealing a deal with its Chinese counterpart be that the Chinese company begins an educational campaign with their workers about treating dogs and cats more humanely. We cannot buy Chinese goods, but that's extremely difficult in that so much of what we use in our daily lives is no manufactured in China. We can support the better-organized campaigns that target Chinese terrible human rights record. Both human and animal rights are connected in China, and if they soften on the former, the latter, I think, will follow.