Sunday a dog killed someone. By Monday the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department was out saying "every dog attack is one too many." Nice line. Doesn't explain why the dog that did it was walking around Hong Kong in the first place, or whether its owner even had it registered properly. Animal welfare groups are now asking the government to close the loophole in pet ownership rules, the one that lets stray and unregistered dogs slip through with basically no consequence until something like this happens.

Here's the bit that gets me. The AFCD's own microchip system will happily register a dog as whatever breed the owner says it is, no check, no vet, nothing. I've written about this before, it's how a dog suspected of being a fighting breed ended up registered as a mongrel. So the department that just told us every attack is "one too many" runs a database that can't actually tell you what kind of dog you own. You can promise a review. You can't promise the review checks the one thing that's been broken the whole time.