The remarks came after a 27-year-old woman died late on Saturday after being chased and attacked by three stray dogs in Yuen Long, marking the second similar canine-related case in just under a month.
Tse said authorities were highly concerned about recent dog attacks in the territory.
He offered his deepest condolences to the family of the deceased, adding that authorities would step up patrol operations and investigate where the pack of dogs came from.
“The Agriculture and Fisheries Department placed a lot of emphasis on how to handle the stray dogs, and in the past years, the numbers have greatly been reduced,” Tse said.
“I think the programme, in general, has been very effective,” he said, referring to management programmes that reduced the number of stray dogs caught each year from more than 11,000 in 2002 to around 400 in recent years.
“But nonetheless, because of the current incident, tragedy, I’ve asked the department to review whether there is any possibility of further strengthening the management of stray dogs in Hong Kong.”
Tse also said a review would be conducted of laws governing dangerous dogs and related penalties, as proposed by Chief Executive John Lee in his Policy Address last week, though he did not reveal a time frame in regards to the assessment.
The review would also be made with a view to strengthening education for dog owners to be aware of their responsibilities to control their pets.
When asked if the latest canine attacks could be linked to land acquisitions for the Northern Metropolis causing the closure of certain dog shelters there, Tse said officers were still investigating but that the location where the incident occurred “seemed not to be related to such land acquisitions”.
However, Tse said he expected the number of strays in the area to rise as development of the mega infrastructure project progressed as some dogs currently inhabited territory covered by certain villages there and “would need to be handled”.
“Therefore, [the AFCD and Development Bureau] have been actually discussing putting up some measures to handle that, and when we have more concrete programmes, I think we’ll make public our plans in future,” he said.
Tse was speaking hours after police officers caught three feral dogs linked to the fatal attack.
He noted that captured stray dogs would typically be sterilised before being released back into the wild again or euthanised if they were found to be in poor physical condition or posed a continuing danger to the public.
The latest killing came a month after a woman working at a dog shelter in Ping Yeung San Tsuen in Ta Kwu Ling was killed by what the department later said was a “fighting dog”, which refers to specific canine types with a history of being bred for fighting.
Tse said he believed local veterinarians had sufficient expertise to judge if a dog was a “fighting dog” or not.
