The director of the city's Department of Animal Health, Nguyen Ngoc Son, told Lao Dong Newspaper on Wednesday (September 12), "Following a direction from the city's People's Committee that called on residents to ease off eating dog meat, we are building a plan to gradually phase out the slaughtering and trading of dog meat.
"By 2021 there will be no dog meat restaurants in the city center."
The People's Committee had asked city residents the previous day to stop eating dog and cat meat and urged local district authorities to launch campaigns to warn people about the risks of contracting diseases, including potentially deadly rabies and leptospirosis, from eating dog and cat meat.
The committee also said that the slaughter and sale of dogs and cats for their meat had damaged the image of Hanoi.
Mr. Son told Lao Dong Newspaper that Hanoi now has 1,013 restaurants selling dog and cat meat. The exact number of dogs and cats eaten throughout Vietnam is not known precisely but is estimated to be around five million animals a year.
The Thailand-based Soi Dog Foundation, which has been working with the Hanoi People's Committee to steer them towards ending the dog meat trade, was surprised by the announcement but delighted.
The charity's founder, John Dalley, said, "This is wonderful news. We sincerely hope that step by step, this planned ban will be spread out across the entire city and will be emulated by other cities in Vietnam.
"There is no place for cruelty in culture. Hanoi is growing into a 21st-century city, and practices that belong in the dark ages should be cleared away."
Soi Dog's representative in Vietnam, Bao Tran, said, "This is huge news here. It was the biggest story on all news outlets in Vietnam and seems to be widely supported by people.
"The vital component now is for Hanoi to discuss and create the legal framework for banning the dog and cat meat trade. Soi Dog will be happy to help and guide in any way we can."
The Soi Dog Foundation was instrumental in tackling the organized smuggling of dogs out of Thailand via Laos to Vietnam. Today that trade has dwindled to a trickle.
Mr Dalley was also a member of the Thai government committee that drafted an anti-cruelty law that came into force in 2014. The law made the eating of dogs and cats in Thailand illegal.
About Soi Dog
Soi Dog Foundation ("soi" is Thai for "alley" or "street") was founded 15 years ago on Phuket. It is now the largest animal welfare charity in Southeast Asia, with the most modern animal hospital in Asia, working with stray animals.
Apart from rescuing sick and injured animals (and finding new homes for them – 600 were rehomed worldwide last year alone), the foundation's main aim has been to control dog populations by neutering and vaccinating as many as possible, with the animals being returned to where they came from.
Soi Dog currently sterilizes and vaccinates around 6,000 animals per month and more than 230,000 have been sterilized since operations began. This includes over 80% of Phuket's stray dog population, a programme that has resulted in a much reduced stray dog population and Phuket being declared Thailand's first rabies-free province
Soi Dog Foundation has now taken on a much bigger project – bringing the 640,000-strong street dog population of Bangkok under control.
Soi Dog Foundation was also instrumental in wiping out the organized illegal dog meat trade that saw thousands of dogs, including people's pets, stolen from Thailand and trucked in horrific conditions across Laos to Vietnam, where they were brutally slaughtered and their carcasses sold to restaurants.
All these achievements come at a price – Soi Dog needs 15 million baht (approx US$430,000, EUR385,000, GBP342,000) a month to cover running costs. This comes entirely from donations.
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