By Tim Pit Hok-yau

Last month, the Office of the Ombudsman released its long-awaited investigation into the Hong Kong government’s work in combating animal cruelty.

The report was prompted by a series of horrifying abuse cases which, in the Ombudsman’s own words, “amount to a deliberate trampling on the dignity of life and run wholly contrary to the very conscience of a civilised society.”

The investigation focuses primarily on the failures of the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD), which is responsible for animal management and welfare.

Among the key findings are the AFCD’s inefficient investigations and insufficient prosecutions. Out of 1,633 reports of suspected animal cruelty from 2020 to June 2025, only six prosecutions were brought – a striking, though not new, statistic.

The AFCD responded to the Ombudsman, saying that the majority of reports it received pertained to noise or nuisance complaints rather than cruelty. However, media reports on animal cruelty, including a recent shocking case of a 14-year-old student sharing online photos and videos of cat abuse, may suggest otherwise. 

Other problems highlighted by the Ombudsman’s report include weak enforcement powers; inconsistent case handling; poor internal monitoring and staff training; delayed reform of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Ordinance (Cap. 169), first promised in 2019; and alarmingly low penalties for illegal animal traps, which currently carry a maximum fine of HK$50,000 with no provision for imprisonment.

These are important findings, and the Ombudsman deserves credit for highlighting institutional deficiencies that animal advocates have raised for years. 

But while the report has identified some of the government’s major failures, it also reveals a deeper problem: Hong Kong’s approach to animal welfare remains fundamentally reactive rather than preventive, with most suggestions focusing on punishment, not prevention.

Worse still, the report overlooks many of the structural and everyday forms of animal plight that are normalised across the city. This article, then, intends to address these blind spots.

Duty of care

The most glaring limitation of the investigative report concerns its ambivalence over nudging the government to implement a “duty of care.”

While the Ombudsman acknowledges that the government has struggled to reach consensus on this proposal, it stops short of urging its adoption. This hesitation matters.

A duty of care would fundamentally shift existing animal law from punishing cruelty after suffering occurs to preventing suffering in the first place. Without such a framework, Hong Kong continues to operate on an outdated logic: authorities intervene only after visible injury, starvation, or death.

If a cat falls from an unprotected high-rise window, or a dog is chronically confined in a tiny flat with little exercise or social contact, the current legal framework can hardly intervene until obvious harm has already occurred.

With a duty of care, caregivers would be legally required to provide appropriate food, shelter, veterinary care, and living conditions that meet animals’ physical and behavioural needs safely. In other common law jurisdictions, including the UK and Australia, duty of care provisions have already become a cornerstone of animal protection.  

Undoubtedly, one of the report’s recommendations is to “further strengthen outreach and education in schools, helping students and young people build an awareness of animal protection from childhood.”

This is a fantastic recommendation for preventing animal cruelty, but it remains frustratingly vague. What kind of education are we talking about?

If Hong Kong genuinely wants to cultivate respect for animals, it must first confront contradictions in the current education system.

Attending a local secondary school, I still remember many science classes where animal dissection was presented as a normal part of learning, from dissecting ox eyes to hearing classmates describe experiments on mice.

These activities are still recommended by the Education Bureau’s Biology Curriculum and Assessment Guide, although the government also expects secondary school students to “learn about how humans can live in harmony with animals and show respect for all living things” in the very same subject.

Humane education

Not only do such laboratory practices risk reinforcing a worldview in which animals exist primarily as instruments for human use, but the pedagogical value of animal dissection has been convincingly challenged by a large corpus of research.

Yet, the issue is perhaps just one of the many voids in our education system that should help enhance animal well-being and stop the everyday exploitation of animals. Learning about veganism, the intersection between animal exploitation and other social problems, conservation, and other elements of animal education are equally important.

Humane education should equip citizens with the ability to locate the many practices of cruelty against animals in Hong Kong, many of which the Ombudsman’s report says nothing about. 

For instance, there have been repeated controversies surrounding captive animals at Ocean Park; animal deaths at the Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens; and the racing industry operated by the Hong Kong Jockey Club, where horses routinely suffer injuries and fatalities caused by running at maximal speed, lax whipping rules, and a hot climate.

Of course, the development projects and human activities that disrupt animals’ habitats should not be ignored. Just think of how Chinese white dolphins have lost their habitat because of reclamation or been injured because of high-speed ferries’ propeller blades, to name just one example.

Whether one supports these institutions and projects or not, it is difficult to argue that they fall outside the conversation on animal welfare.

The government’s poor animal management policies in urban areas are another major omission in the Ombudsman’s investigation. The report rightly condemns illegal animal traps but ignores government-led practices that also cause suffering, including the wild boar culling operations.

It also neglects ineffective regulation of religious animal release practices, which often disrupt ecosystems and harm the very animals being “saved” because more often than not, they are not released into suitable habitats. 

If Hong Kong truly wants to become a “civilised” city that respects life, then animal welfare cannot be confined to criminal prosecutions of isolated abuse cases. It must also confront the legal, educational, economic, and cultural systems that normalise animal suffering in everyday life and prevent it from happening in the first place.

Another step that must be taken to safeguard animals’ well-being is to ask a harder question: What kinds of relationships do we, as a city, continue to build with the animals who live among us?

As philosopher Martha Nussbaum reminds us, animal justice should not be measured simply by the absence of cruelty, but by whether animals can actualise the capabilities essential to their flourishing.

For dogs, that includes play, movement, and social bonding. For dolphins, it means the ability to hunt, communicate, and live within their natural habitat. Survival alone is not welfare; a decent life is.

The Ombudsman’s report is an important step. But it should not be mistaken for an ultimate solution. Rather, it should remind us that there is always more that we – as policymakers, educators, and citizens – must do.

Tim Pit Hok-yau is research lead for the Hong Kong Animal Law and Protection Organisation.

An infectious disease specialist has called on Hong Kong authorities to step up rodent checks, despite confirmation that no residents from the city were on board the hantavirus-hit cruise ship in the Atlantic Ocean.

Speaking on an RTHK programme on Friday, physician and infectious disease specialist Dr Joseph Tsang said the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) should conduct regular monitoring of rats.

“The AFCD should conduct regular monitoring to test whether rats in the environment carry viruses,” he said.

The Centre for Health Protection (CHP) previously issued a statement on Thursday, saying there were no Hong Kong residents on the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship, which carried 147 passengers and crew members.

The CHP also said that, as of Wednesday, no infections had been reported in Hong Kong.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of Thursday, there were eight reported cases linked to the MV Hondius, including three deaths. Five of the eight cases have been confirmed as hantavirus.

‘Cannot let our guard down’

Hantavirus is primarily transmitted through direct contact with the faeces, saliva or urine of infected rodents, or by inhaling aerosolised particles of their waste, according to the CHP. Human-to-human transmission is relatively rare, and there is currently no vaccine to prevent infection.

The risk to global health posed by the cruise ship incident is low, the CHP added, citing the WHO.

Tsang said that, despite the low risk, he still urged cleaners to be aware of the dangers.

“I wouldn’t say the risk of infection in Hong Kong is especially high, but we cannot let our guard down,” the physician said.

“Hantavirus is usually concentrated in places with more rats, such as refuse collection points, rear stairwells, or the back alleys of restaurants. Sanitation workers should take particular care.”

It’s doubly exciting to see that Chief Executive John Lee is launching a public consultation for Hong Kong’s inaugural five-year plan.

The first reason for excitement is that we’ve just experienced a pretty well-run public consultation; the recently updated Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan generated a lot of submissions from NGOs, companies, and members of the public.

The Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department (AFCD) seems to have done a good job of taking those submissions into account. In short, we’ve seen a proof of concept that public consultations seem to be effective.

The second reason for excitement is that China takes sustainability quite seriously in both word and deed. In aligning with China, the Hong Kong government has a golden opportunity to step up its sustainability game.

The outline of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan is 83 pages long. However, just as a very rough indicator of how seriously the topic is taken, Article 1, Chapter 1, Section 1 includes several comments about the energy transition and pollution.

Sustainability is considered important enough a topic to warrant some space in the prime real estate of those first few paragraphs, rubbing shoulders with big hitters like GDP and life expectancy. 

It might not be very scientific to measure a topic’s importance by which paragraph it lies in, but it is incredibly refreshing to see sustainability topics getting headline treatment instead of being tucked away on page 18.

In a similar vein, the top number in the Key Indicators of Economic and Social Development is GDP. However, in that very same table, there are binding objectives for carbon intensity goals, PM2.5 levels, and forest cover.

I get the sense that these are not just handwaved in order to hit a game of buzzword bingo – something that corporations are frequently guilty of. Rigorous thought has been put into integrating sustainability into the Five-Year Plan.

At the April 21 press conference, when Lee talked about the public consultation for the five-year plan, sustainability, carbon and pollution were not mentioned at all. Of course, GDP growth and the perennial issues of housing and education are all vital issues that need to be addressed.

However, if we’re talking in terms of five-year plans, it’s probably worth noting that in five years from now, the world needs to have carbon emissions at half of what they are today. And that in 25 years from now – just five more five-year plans away! – we need to be at net zero. Sustainability is vital too.

Of course, Hong Kong’s tiny landmass is not home to vast factories, refineries or farms. Most of the carbon that we emit is from producing electricity to power the towers that are our homes and offices.

So while emulating the priority that sustainability is afforded in China’s five-year plan is important, copy-pasting it wholesale would miss important nuance: that Hong Kong’s carbon shadow is much larger than our territorial footprint.

We import almost everything – food, energy, goods, and even water. The spectre of our carbon emissions haunts not only what we consume, but also the vast amounts of financing that flow across the world from our international financial centre.

Sustainability in Hong Kong is not just about plonking a few solar panels down; it’s a much deeper question about consumption and green finance.

That’s not to diminish the role of sustainability in our own territory; there’s plenty of room for more ambition, not just in carbon but with other forms of pollution.

For example, the Municipal Solid Waste charging scheme’s failure to progress beyond the pilot study means that there’s little push to reduce waste at source.

While it’s true that landfill rates are going down, incineration is going up – in other words, the generation of trash is not slowing down, but is instead just being diverted to the landfill in the sky. That’s not a long-term solution.

I hasten to add that putting sustainability higher on the agenda is not just important for the Hong Kong government. Company boards and executive teams ought to be discussing sustainability during their strategy meetings.

Hopefully, seeing sustainability high on the agenda in the government’s five-year plan will light a fire under corporations to up their sustainability game too.

All told, the idea of a public consultation for Hong Kong’s five-year plan is a wonderful opportunity. Public consultations have a prior form in moving the needle – the Biodiversity Strategy Action Plan has demonstrated that.

And by aligning Hong Kong’s five-year plan with China’s, we can achieve one of the most important things of all – putting sustainability on the agenda.