Q&A of the Day – Should we bring foreign rescue dogs to South Florida for adoption? - Part 1
Each day I’ll feature a listener question that’s been submitted by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Twitter: @brianmuddradio
Facebook: Brian Mudd https://www.facebook.com/brian.mudd1
Today’s entry...
1st note
Brian, did I understand correctly that an organization wants to bring dogs that are rescued from China to Palm Beach County? If so, this is wrong for they may bring in diseases that will affect show dogs.
2nd note
Our vets did not and could not take care of the diseased dogs that came in from Chernobyl and now we have diseases we never had before within our country. Additionally, we kill so many dogs from our own nation that needed a home. Why add to that?
Bottom Line: I received these notes after the story that Big Dog Ranch Rescue was seeking donates to make a trip over to China to rescue dogs that’d otherwise be eaten during the Chinese “Meat Festival”. Before digging into this topic, it’s worth noting that Big Dog has made previous trips to China to bring rescue dogs back to South Florida from China including 37 earlier this year. Now, about the concerns from the listeners starting with the question about the risk of disease from these animals.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention require all dogs to be examined by a licensed veterinarian prior to being imported into the United States. So, there is a process to help safe guard against bringing diseased animals back to the US.That being said is it always effective? No.
The CDC has issued a health risk advisory over the importation of foreign animals because often paper work and back ground information on the animals is missing, incomplete and/or forged and not all potential diseases are detectable in all stages of contamination. The most notable example of this came in 2015 with dogs and cats rescued from Egypt and brought to New York and Virginia. The animals turned out to have rabies, but it wasn’t detected until adoptions had already begun to take place. All told 18 people had to be treated for rabies and many animals which came in contact with them had to be put down.
The most recent related health warning came from the Canadian Pubic Health Agency just last month. A woman who rescued a dog from Mexico contracted an infectious blood disease, brucellosis, from her rescue that nearly killed her. On back of this the Canadian Pubic Health Agency put out a warning about rescuing animals from foreign countries.
To boil down the threat of disease. Is it possible that diseased animals can make their way into the country when rescued? Yes. Is it common? It doesn’t appear to be. Is it worth the risk? That’s for you to decide. In the second part of today’s Q&A I’ll address the number of animals already in Florida in need of a home.