Chinese online stores offering cat and dog skin products

One of china’s largest online stores, Taobao, is seen to offer products made from skins of cats and dogs had caused a ruckus among animal lovers. Taobao’s search results and sales records showed that the most popular items are trousers and hats made from dog fur, said to ward off the cold.

"sjz2ys", one of the sellers on Taobao claimed that all the cat skin products sold on his online store are all authentic, although he only sold one waistcoat in the past month. A spokesperson for Taobao had explained saying the site’s word search function are imperfect where the search results for “cat skin” would show up related products. "There are such products on Taobao but there are a hundred of them at most. We have noticed the report and are contacting the seller to take them off shelves," the spokeswoman told AFP.

However, it seemed that the search results for “dog fur” showed thousands of results. A quick scan of the products seemed to be authentic animal-based product.

Animal rights activists said sellers usually targets stray animals, selling their skins to fur traders in the east and animal meat to restaurants in the south. Despite volunteers volunteering to protect the animals, these efforts are not enough as the government’s supervision is inadequate.

One of the animal lover commented on popular social networking site, Douban, "Would those sleeping on a mattress made at the cost of lives feel really happy and comfortable? Isn't that cruel?" on a picture if mattress made from cat fur.

Even though Taobao had already banned the sale of cat/dog meat, furs and fur products, with the sale of products made from the parts of endangered species, it seemed that these enforcement rules are lacking.

An operator of Taobao said that the numbers of sellers publishing such product details are more overwhelming than deleting irregular information.

This article appealed to me because I am an animal lover, I love dogs and had previously own a dog.

If I was in charge of the situation, I would try to set up a place for stray animals to live in. this would be the best solution to protect these animals to prevent them from being hunted. However, this idea is not feasible as there is a lack of resources. Otherwise, I would set up a team of animal protectors to catch animal hunters. Those animal hunters will be jailed or caned to show the rest of animal hunters their consequences.