From "Dog Killing Island" to Zero Culling: Forty Years of Redemption in Taiwan's Animal Protection

30-Second Overview: The history of animal protection in Taiwan is a dramatic transition from "waste disposal" to "respect for life." In the 1980s and 1990s, Taiwan gained a notorious international reputation due to large-scale and cruel culling of stray dogs, even provoking boycotts by Europe, the US, and Japan. However, through three decades of relentless effort by civil society groups, Taiwan promulgated the Animal Protection Act in 1998 and officially became the second country in Asia to implement "zero culling" in 2017. Today, quarantine dogs at airports are national heroes, witnessing the ascent of Taiwanese societal civilization.

The Era of Shame: "Dog Killing Island" Signs at Japanese Airports

In the early 1990s, Taiwan's international image was at an extremely contradictory crossroads. While the economic miracle propelled Taiwan onto the world stage, tens of thousands of stray dogs on the streets represented the darkest corner of the nation. At the time, the Taiwanese government treated strays as a "sanitation issue," and cleanup was managed by sanitation teams from the Environmental Protection Administration, not animal welfare units¹.

Between 1993 and 1994, international animal protection groups such as the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) launched intense campaigns against Taiwan. Large signs appeared at international gateways like Narita Airport in Japan and Heathrow Airport in London, titled "Taiwan: Land of Dog Killing," urging international travelers not to visit this cruel country toward animals². The signs featured shocking images of stray dogs being electrocuted, drowned, or mass-buried—a major diplomatic and image blow to the Taiwanese government, which was actively seeking international standing at the time.

📝 Curator's Note: The "dog catching teams" of that era were essentially cleanup crews; dogs were treated as "waste," reflecting a collective disregard for the value of life in their disposal logic.

Awakening Born from Tragedy: From Dog Bites to the Birth of the Animal Protection Act

While international pressure was a driving force, the true awakening came from bloody lessons within Taiwan itself. In 1992, three tragedies occurred consecutively in Hualien, Hsinchu, and Taipei where stray dogs bit and killed young children, sparking public panic over "the proliferation of wild dogs"³. However, this panic did not lead to more brutal slaughter; instead, it galvanized civil society organizations. In 1993, the Life Care Association was established, beginning efforts to promote Taiwan's first specialized law for animal protection⁴.

On November 4, 1998, the Animal Protection Act was officially promulgated and enforced. This law stipulated that animals must not be arbitrarily killed. Although it retained a clause allowing "humane disposition if no one claims them after seven days," it ended the dark period of arbitrary electrocution and drowning of strays by cleanup crews, elevating animal management from an environmental issue to a legal matter⁵.

The Power of Images: The Social Tsunami Triggered by the Film Twelve Nights

Even with the Animal Protection Act in place, public shelters in Taiwan long suffered from overcapacity and high euthanasia rates. Before 2012, the culling rate in shelters across Taiwan was consistently above 50%, reaching as high as eighty percent in some areas⁶.

In 2013, the documentary Twelve Nights premiered, truthfully documenting the cruel reality of stray dogs facing their last twelve days in shelters. The desperate eyes and cramped, filthy environment shown in the film triggered a massive emotional tsunami in Taiwanese society⁷. This movie not only grossed sixty million viewers but also directly translated into political pressure. In 2015, the Legislative Yuan passed an amendment to the Animal Protection Act in a very short period, announcing the complete abolition of euthanasia in public shelters two years later—the so-called "zero culling" policy⁸.

The End of Twelve Nights: Milestones and Challenges of Zero Culling

In February 2017, Taiwan officially implemented the zero culling policy, becoming the second country in Asia to legally prohibit killing healthy animals in shelters due to space or time constraints⁹. However, zero culling was not the end; it was the beginning of another test.

After the policy's implementation, shelters quickly became overwhelmed. Because they were "inflow-only," shelters transformed from temporary stops into "final resting places," with many dogs staying in cramped kennels for over a thousand days⁹. This led to declining shelter quality and immense pressure on veterinarians, eventually leading to a policy shift toward "precision catching" and Trap-Neuter-Return (TNVR), attempting to reduce the intake pressure at the source.

📝 Curator's Note: While zero culling demonstrated civil advancement in law, it exposed the bitter consequences of long-term failures in source management (such as penalties for abandonment or owner registration) in its execution.

Ecological Conflict: The Survival Battle Between Stray Dogs and Native Wildlife

As stray dog populations persisted in the wild, Taiwan's animal protection issues entered a new controversial area: conflicts between strays and native wildlife. In recent years, cases of macaques on Yangmingshan, civets in Nantou, and pangolins across various locations being killed by stray dogs have frequently been reported, an issue academics refer to as "dog killing"¹⁰.

Research shows that over half of the pangolins brought to emergency centers were bitten by dogs; and one-third of wild leopards also died from dog attacks¹¹. This has sparked intense debates between animal protection groups (focused on individual lives) and conservation groups (focused on species survival). How to protect rare native animals within the framework of "zero culling" is Taiwan's most difficult current environmental ethical problem¹².

Today's Taiwan: From National Burden to Guardian Dogs

Having passed through a period of shame, the attitude of Taiwanese people toward animals today is vastly different. In 2026, a set of promotional posters from Taoyuan Airport sparked heated discussion on Japanese social media, featuring two sharp-eyed Mirdog quarantine dogs with the pun slogan "I absorb YOU," showcasing Taiwan's professionalism and humor in safeguarding agriculture¹³.

From the shameful boycott signs at Japanese airports in the 1990s to the "super cool quarantine dogs" that went viral among Japanese netizens in the 2020s, this forty-year arc records not just the fate of animals, but the civilized journey of Taiwanese people learning to coexist with other life forms. Although new challenges such as shelter saturation and ecological conflicts still exist, "life should not be arbitrarily erased" has become a firm belief for this island¹⁴.

References

Footnotes