Lawmakers urge legal revamp to tackle pet abandonment after zero convictions in years

Lawmakers have urged the government to strengthen legislation and enforcement against pet abandonment, as authorities consider higher penalties after a spate of dog attacks.

The push comes after a 27-year-old woman was fatally attacked by three stray dogs while cycling home last Sunday. Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan said that animal abandonment is the root cause of the stray dog issue and pledged to review existing laws to increase penalties. 

Under Section 22 of the Rabies Ordinance, any animal keeper who abandons an animal without reasonable excuse faces a maximum fine of HK$10,000 and six months’ imprisonment. 

However, the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) said it has not initiated any prosecutions under that provision from 2023 to 2025. Historical records also show no prosecutions were brought between 2020 and 2022, meaning the law has gone unenforced for six years.

The department acknowledged that gathering sufficient evidence to meet the legal threshold for abandonment remains difficult. In dog-bite cases, authorities typically rely on Section 23 of the Rabies Ordinance or the Dangerous Dogs Regulation instead, which target owners who fail to properly control their pets in public.

Those offenses carry penalties including a fine of up to HK$10,000, or up to HK$25,000 and up to three months’ imprisonment for large dogs weighing 20 kilograms or more. Over the past three years, the offenses have averaged around 200 cases annually.

During a joint operation by the AFCD and police near Pok Wai South Road in Yuen Long, eight unattended dogs were seized. Three had microchips with expired licenses. Authorities prosecuted Kent Luk Ka-chit, founder of the Paws Guardian Rescue Shelter, under Section 20 of the Rabies Ordinance for failing to hold a valid dog license and under Section 23 for failing to properly control a dog in public—without charging him with animal abandonment.

Rebecca Chan Hoi-yan, chair of the Legislative Council’s Panel on Food Safety and Environmental Hygiene, attributed the lack of abandonment prosecutions to the difficulty of disproving a keeper’s “reasonable excuse.”

She said that rural pet owners often claim their dogs are free-roaming, while owners intending to abandon pets may argue the animals broke their leashes and wandered off. 

While welcoming tougher penalties to improve deterrence, Chan called on the government to use surveillance technology and step up public education.

Barrister and lawmaker Alex Fan Hoi-kit said prosecution is not entirely impossible under existing law. He argued that if an owner fails to notify the AFCD or police within 96 hours after capturing an animal, the animal may be deemed legally abandoned.

Fan added that a defendant cannot simply avoid liability in court by claiming, in practice, the dog was lost. He said responsible owners would file a police report if a pet went missing, and courts would not automatically accept an owner’s explanation as a “reasonable excuse.”

Chan urged authorities to enforce the law appropriately on a case-by-case basis and consider optimizing legal provisions to ensure more effective implementation.

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