A woman cycling in Yuen Long died over the weekend in what police suspect was a dog attack. The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department moved in afterward and caught three stray mongrels near the road where it happened. Nobody's saying yet which dog, if any of the three, actually did it.

Here's the bit that should bother you more than the attack itself. Hong Kong's dog microchip system logs whatever breed the owner types in, no check, no vet confirming it. A stray obviously has no owner filling in a form, so AFCD's response is the only tool available: catch everything nearby and sort it out after. That's not a system, that's a dragnet. If a chipped, "mongrel-registered" dog can already slip through undetected as something more dangerous, three uncollared strays picked up after the fact tell you nothing about which one bit. The department is doing the only thing it can with a registry that was never built to answer the question people actually want answered: was this dog known to be dangerous before today.