BANGKOK: -- Thai authorities are struggling to stop dogs from being stolen and smuggled to northern Vietnam, where one million dogs are eaten each year.
Stray dogs and pets are being illegally snatched, bought, or even bartered for household items, then smuggled to Vietnam, where they are sold, butchered and eaten.
With bribery at border checkpoints, apathy in the transit country of Laos, and northern Vietnam's appetite for one million dogs a year, Thai authorities are struggling to stop an estimated 200,000 dogs every year being exported alive in this international racket.
Smugglers pay helpers, often poor farmers, to comb rural areas and towns, buying dogs, grabbing strays or stealing pets.
Dogs are collected throughout the northeast of Thailand, then taken to holding pens in the provinces of Nong Khai, Bueng Kan, Nakhon Phanom and Mukdahan.
In transit, conditions for the animals are horrendous. The dogs are loaded by the hundreds onto open-sided trucks, starving and dehydrated, and stacked on top of each other, suffering from bite wounds and broken bones — some even dying en route
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