China passes new animal quarantine law

On Friday, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, the nation's top legislature, passed the newly amended Animal Epidemic Prevention, which will come into effect on May 1.

The law concerns all livestocks, animals raised or captured by humans. Based on their potential harms to agricultural production and human health, the law divides animal diseases into three kinds and requires a mandatory quarantine of animals that severely threaten agriculture and human health.

Compared with the past version, which came into effect in 2008, the newly amended law highlights the prevention of rabies, which is mainly carried by dogs. The law makes it clear that any person or organization raising a dog must vaccinate it routinely, and register with the vaccination certificate.

Those who walk a dog outdoors must attach a legally registered card to it, and keep the dog on a leash to prevent it from hurting people or spreading diseases.

Sun Baojun, a research fellow at the Institute of Zoology, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said the move is necessary because dog is the main carrier of rabies. In certain developed countries such as Japan, it has long been written in laws that pet dogs must be vaccinated as vaccination is the best antidote against rabies.

Gao Fu, head of Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news conference in 2019 that it is much better to vaccinate dogs than humans.

Besides, lack of quarantine standards for wild animals is a major deficit with the current wild animal epidemic control. The newly amended law has made it clear that the agricultural and wild animal protection departments of the State Council, China's Cabinet, must co-work in making a quarantine regulation for wild animals.

According to the new law, if anyone wants to use wild animals for non-eating purposes, such as research, pharmacy and exhibition, they must apply for animal health monitoring institutions to do the quarantine. Those who capture wild animals must also pass the quarantine procedure before raising or transporting them.