Dog Meat Mafia revealed the booming dog meat trade

The Dog Meat Mafia is a four-part special report by Patrick Winn of GlobalPost on Southeast Asia's booming dog meat trade — a crime-ridden, multi-million dollar industry that stretches from upcountry Thailand, through Laos and into Vietnam. The series examines the economic, cultural and illicit aspects of the controversial business, and features an On Location video that illustrates how it works. Is Thailand is shamed by the trade’s barbarism.

Each month, regional syndicates collect roughly 30,000 free-roaming strays in Thailand for illegal export to Vietnam, where demand for dog meat runs high. All that dog collecting spares provincial pounds many of the challenges faced by U.S. animal shelters. Police and politicians much prefer to let the free market dispense with society’s unwanted mutts.

Corruption in the dog meat trade

Though reviled by mainstream Thai society, killing and eating dogs carries no legal penalty. Much of the other laws broken by regional dog traffickers — such as noise disturbance and transporting unvaccinated animals — are largely unenforced.

Convincing authorities to tolerate the illegal ports requires extensive pay-offs, traffickers and police say. One inside source says the bribes amount to 25 baht per smuggled dog — about 75 cents — paid to a local administrator who provides a one-stop kickback service that divvies the cash out to every necessary authority.

For more, read the following series
* Inside the seedy world of Southeast Asia's booming dog meat trade
* Is Southeast Asia's booming dog meat industry animal cruelty? Or taking out society's trash?
* The dark underbelly of a booming trade in dog meat

* Olympic Snippets - Dog meat on sale