'Gray area' results in legal, supervisory challenges

As an emerging industry, pet funeral homes exist in a gray area.

That means they face a number of problems in terms of lack of supervision, management and regulations, according to experts.

Currently, local animal husbandry departments manage animal burials, while local civil affairs departments oversee human funerals. However, pet funerals are not the responsibility of either body.

The Animal Epidemic Prevention Law requires the "harmless" disposal of sick and dead animals, but no corresponding provisions have been put in place to regulate the practices or qualifications for providers of pet funerals or for pet morticians.

The situation has resulted in a confused pricing structure and variable quality of service.

According to Wang Yinghao, a pet mortician in Beijing, some pet cremation providers only want to profit from the market, so they show no respect to the dead animal.

After an owner delivers the body, some providers fail to follow accepted cremation procedures and simply give owners the leftover ashes of a different pet.

Moreover, most pet cremation sites are located far from downtown, so owners cannot always witness the entire procedure.

Liu Hongyan, a researcher with the Institute of Law at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told Legal Daily that to solve this problem, pet industry associations could formulate relevant regulations on funeral services under government guidance and could also arrange training sessions for professionals and organizations.

He also suggested that cities could establish special pet cemeteries.

This would not only prevent the random disposal of animal carcasses－which poses hidden dangers to public health and is a waste of land resources－but also provide appropriate sites for owners to remember their beloved pets.

Liu added that pet industry associations could set up an assessment system to check the qualifications of pet morticians.

"In view of the rapid development of the pet funeral industry in China, the regulatory authorities should accept consumer demands and respect that development while regulating unreasonable business practices in a timely manner," he said.