RECOM
,5J Bowen Road
1st Floor
Hong Kong Tel. 5-235542
20th January, 1977.
C. Platt, Esq.,
Field Services Director,
International Society for the Protection of Animals,
106 Jermyn Street,
London, SWLY 6EE,
ENGLAND.
Dear Mr. Platt,
Animals & Plants (Protection of Endangered Species)
Ordinance No. 63 of 1976 and
Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Ordinance
Thank you for your letter of the 5th instant together with its enclosure.
I now write to you on an informal basis to let you know in further detail what has transpired to date between myself and the Department of Agriculture & Fisheries as regards my concern with animal welfare.
First of all, I refer to Miss Patricia Penn's BBC broadcast dated August 1973, which broadcast, incidentally, was vetoed by the local authorities and was consequently never heard by the Hong Kong public. A debate took place in London shortly after this broadcast in which the London Zoo official, Michael Borer, in complete ignorance of the status quo, unfairly declared Miss Penn's findings as being an exaggeration of facts.
I enclose for your information photocopies of the Commis- sioner of Police's reply, the Government Secretariat's reply, and my fresh appeal to the Governor himself.
ww
In 1973 E.H. Nichols, the Director of Agriculture & Fisheries, told Patricia Penn that Shing Lee Hong "were technically unlicenseable, but it was considered not by this Department alone I might add that it would have been wrong to have enforced a technicality of the law upon them when there was every intention of changing the law". Nichols persistently maintains a laissez-faire attitude when it comes to dealing with local animal animal/bird dealers.
The HKSPCA, the Pest Control Office, various self-styled "Asian veterans", as well as the Department have all implied that my concern with animal welfare is liable to occasion political embarrassment - bearing in mind that Hong Kong is dependent on Mainland China for the better part of its food/ water supply - and I challenge any one of these authorities with an argumentum ad hominem as to why the Hong Kong Government's Political Adviser by name of Alan Donald, when I spoke with him on the telephone just prior to his departure on leave, told me I was talking nonsense and that he knew nothing about the matter which to him was not a political issue in any case, and that I would do well not to waste his time and to refer the matter to either the Royal Hong Kong Police or the Department of Agriculture.
/contd...