Long-form / 深度專題
寵物：由禁屠狗到流浪動物
Pets: from the dog-meat ban to stray animals
香港嘅寵物規管係幾時開始？點解「寵物數目」同「流浪動物數字」唔可以混為一談？
香港嘅寵物政策，起點唔係愛護動物，而係公共衞生：1949 年有人要求取締屠狗，1950 年政府為堵截狂犬病而發牌。之後嘅規管、貿易同流浪動物處理，都沿住呢兩條線長出嚟。
約 4 分鐘 · 5 節 · 8 條時間線 · 3 份文獻
English
1. 1949: how the dog-meat ban became the starting point
Pet regulation in Hong Kong did not begin with animal welfare; it was forced by two problems: the custom of eating dog meat, and rabies. In 1949, Chow Shouson, together with members of the Executive and Legislative Councils, led more than 2,000 merchants and notables to present a petition to Governor Grantham asking him to support a ban on dog slaughter. The target was not pet owners but the trade that slaughtered dogs for meat — yet the episode set a pattern that would repeat: public figures invoking moral grounds to ask the Government to intervene in what animals are used for.
A year later the Government intervened in the same animals for a different reason: public health. In 1950, to stop the spread of rabies, it promulgated an ordinance requiring dog owners to take out a licence and to have their dogs vaccinated. The ordinance’s name — the Dogs and Cats Ordinance 1950 — shows that it covered the two animals closest to people; and the pairing of “licence plus injection” has remained the backbone of dog control ever since. From that point, keeping a dog was no longer a purely private habit: it required registration with the Government and proof of vaccination.
2. What licensing actually covers: dogs yes, cats no register
Talk of “pet registration” often assumes that both cats and dogs must be registered. The reality is narrower: dogs must be licensed, and the licence is tied to rabies vaccination; cats have no comparable central register. The asymmetry is historical. The 1950 ordinance targeted the chain of rabies transmission, and dogs — moving outdoors, most likely to bite — were the first to be licensed. For cats, official knowledge has long rested on sample surveys rather than a register that can be compared year by year.
That is why this site does not publish a “total number of pets”. No single official figure can answer for cats, dogs, birds, reptiles and fish at once. The Census and Statistics Department produces sample proportions from thematic household surveys; AFCD holds administrative numbers on dog licences and strays. The two are different things: one is what households say they keep, the other is what the Government has on its books. Adding or subtracting them produces a “pet total” that does not exist.
3. The pet trade: birds, squirrels, newts
Much of Hong Kong’s pet history is trade history. As early as the 1870s, the bird pet trade already existed in Hong Kong, though its scale was limited at the time. The point of that official record is not that Hongkongers liked keeping birds, but that birds were traded: they entered households through a market that set price, species and supply.
Trade also leaves unwanted consequences. In the late 1960s, Pallas’s squirrels kept as pets were released or escaped and have since become established locally; from the 1970s, Hong Kong newts were sold as pets in local aquarium shops. Both cases say the same thing: once a pet leaves its cage, it can become “local wildlife”. No deliberate introduction is needed — one release or one escape is enough.
4. A million animals in 1979, and the smuggling that followed
If one figure has to place Hong Kong in the regional animal trade, 1979 is the year: the number of birds and animals imported from mainland China may have reached 1,000,000 or more, for food, for keeping as pets, and for re-export. The unit is “birds and animals”, not “pets”; three uses shared one supply chain, which is exactly why the line between “pet” and “food” has never been clear in Hong Kong’s history.
When border controls tighten, trade does not disappear — it goes underground. In January 2011, AFCD seized 785 softshell turtles that had been smuggled in and were intended for the pet trade. The phrase “intended for the pet trade” matters: the same species can be bushmeat, a pet, or something to be released for merit; an enforcement figure records the use at the moment of seizure, not the size of the market.
5. Strays: neutering, intake and “humane disposal”
Strays are the other side of pet policy: keeping animals produces abandonment, and abandonment produces intake. Part of AFCD’s response is source control — from the 2000s it rolled out contraception and neutering programmes for wild macaques, wild boar and stray cattle. Those programmes concern “community animals”, which overlap with pets but are not the same: a lost dog turns from pet into stray, while a calf born in the countryside was never a pet at all.
On figures, this site keeps to registered official definitions: AFCD publishes annual numbers of strays received and humanely disposed of, each defined separately, and neither is a formula for “how much was reduced”. Headlines sometimes say “how many were killed each year”, but intake includes owner surrenders, enforcement seizures and animals actually caught on the street; different sources lead to different handling and different outcomes. This dossier will not add the lines together, nor project one year from another: comparison requires the official table for each year.
Gaps
- Not covered yet: the share of households keeping cats or dogs (C&SD thematic household survey, which needs year-by-year checking of the questionnaire and denominator), licensed dog counts, licensed animal trader counts, registered veterinarian numbers, and the full annual breakdown of rehoming and humane disposal.
- Not covered yet: the amendments that followed the 1950 ordinance, including when the Rabies Ordinance took over — this site has not compared the official legal texts line by line, so no year is asserted.
