Letter: Man's best friend

Sir: I hope the rescue teams going into Taiwan will keep a watchful eye on their sniffer dogs. A common fate of the unfortunate canine inhabitants of this island is to be strung up by the neck and, while painfully strangling, to have their fur removed by means of a blowtorch. This apparently makes them more acceptable at the dinner table.

This barbaric cruelty is not confined to Taiwan. The governments of China, Japan and Korea all condone this evil and show no signs of enforcing even minimal animal welfare standards.

It is ironic that the very people the dogs are trying to rescue would quite happily torture their rescuers to death and then eat them. If proof of my assertions is required, I refer you to documentary evidence supplied by the World Society for the Protection of Animals.

JOHN WOOD

St Austell, Cornwall