Filipino dog trade petition

Press, 8 July 1982, Page 3

Filipino dog trade petition

Wellington reporter A Christchurch woman was forced to take unauthorised annual leave to present a petition to the Parliamentary Petitions Committee yesterday. •' Miss Natalie Taylor presented a petition against inhumane slaughter of dogs in the Philippines, asking the New Zealand Government to protest against the brutality of the dog-meat trade there. She said that her immediate manager at a Christchurch company opposed her use of annual leave owing, to take the petition to the committee. Miss Taylor said that she had applied for the leave immediately on receipt of a letter from the committee’s clerk, advising, of her date of hearing.; t \ : She applied last Friday for leave yesterday. But she said

that her section manager •‘did not want her to use" her annual leave, which was outstanding, to take a petition opposing brutal treatment in the Philippines of dogs before slaughter. “Eventually, I just took it, so that I could be present," Miss Taylor said. Miss Taylor works as a saleswoman. Her absence would’ have left. one other saleswoman in sole charge. She realised her application for annual leave was at short notice, she said. The petition to the committee carried 20,500 signatures, gathered in Christchurch, other parts of Canterbury, and the West Coast, from the beginning of the year. In the petition, mounted by four Christchurch women, the submission said;that the heads of government in Britain and the United States j

has sent letters of protest to the Philippine Government after investigators from an international animal welfare society found dogs were cruelly treated before slaughter for human consumption in the Philippines. It asked the Government to make supplication to the Philippine Government that it teach in the schools care and respect for "those creatures" to .counter the customs ingrained by the habit of eating dog flesh. The Petitions Committee will make a recommendation to the House on the status of the petition, when it reconvenes. Miss Taylor said that the petition was not infering in the politics and customs of another country by asking that the custom of eating dog flesh be stopped. But inhumane killing practices should be. she said.