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Marc the vet - the ‘geek from Stanmore’ who took on the puppy traffickers and won

Marc Abraham, known to millions of TV viewers, succeeded in getting 'Lucy's Law' on puppy and kitten selling passed

October 10, 2019 13:27
Marc Abraham cleans Scooby, the dog he rescued from a cage in Korea
3 min read

As a small boy — a self-described “nerdy Jewish geek from Stanmore” — all Marc Abraham w anted to do was to help animals.

Last week, Marc The Vet, as he has become known to millions of TV viewers, was celebrating a double triumph. He has succeeded in getting what is known as “Lucy’s Law” passed into English law, meaning that from next April it will be illegal to buy a puppy or a kitten without seeing it with its mother, in the place where it was born. It will be the end of third party puppy and kitten trading in the UK.

And Marc has just come back from Korea, where, together with a team from the charity Humane Society International (HSI), he helped close down a dog meat farm and bring the terrified animals to rescue centres in America, Canada and the UK.

This particular farm, around two to three hours’ drive from the South Korean capital, Seoul, held 90 dogs, but Marc explained that many such places had hundreds of animals. “Traditionally dog meat is popular among older people in Korea — when you speak to younger people they want nothing to do with it. When we went there it was just horrible, physically and mentally for the dogs. They are kept in tiny cages with wire so that the faeces and urine go through and they are effectively living on pits of faeces. When we went near them, they didn’t know whether we were being friendly or going to grab them — because usually what happens is that the dog is grabbed from the cage and electrocuted”.