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Kunming lacking dead pet disposal services

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When her Samoyed dog died recently, a Kunming resident named Ms Zhang went about trying to dispose of the carcass. What Ms Zhang discovered is that there are no businesses or government departments in Kunming that accept dead pets for burial or cremation, according to a report on the Yunnan Net website.

After searching Kunming to no avail for a legitimate means of disposing of the dog's roughly 20-kilogram (44-pound) body, Zhang bought four large slabs of ice for 80 yuan (US$12) and used them to chill the dog's body until she could decide what to do (the report contains a photo, but be warned it is somewhat graphic, especially to dog lovers).

She couldn't bear to simply put her beloved pet's body into the trash, and besides didn't want to cause any environmental or public health problems, she explained to a Yunnan Net reporter.

Upon further investigation, Zhang's problem turned out to be a common one among Kunming pet owners, for whom there are apparently no services available to dispose of dead dogs or other pets. "We get 20 or 30 people facing this problem every month," a vet at a pet hospital in Kunming told Yunnan Net.

The head of another pet hospital said he had applied to the government to start a pet disposal service but his application had been denied. Indeed, ambiguous bureaucratic boundaries may be a major reason for the shortage of legitimate means of disposal of deceased pets. For example, the department that deals with agricultural animal affairs will not handle pet remains and municipal human crematoriums won't either.

A wave of dogs and other pets have found their way into Kunming homes in recent years, and dog ownership is only growing in popularity. It remains unclear if facilities will be in place by the time these animals start to die in large numbers. Meanwhile, there was no word in the Yunnan Net report about what if anything Ms Zhang has done about her deceased refrigerated dog.

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Comments

[UNF]

Seriously why wouldn't you bring the dead dog to one of those dog-meat restaurants?
You get rid off a problem - that dead biomass gets recycled (the most efficient way), maybe you can have a bite and inherit the soul of your beloved companion (a bit atavistic, I know, but some people would like to do so). If you're lucky you even go back home with a hundred kuai.

[UNF]

rigor mortis - makes the meat taste...bad.

This sounds like a SimCity newsfeed.

[UNF]

@laotou00
only if you wait till the last minute

@soaliente
true:)

[UNF]

This is a wacky, wacky place we live in.

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