Dog slaughter in the name of 'tradition' shames China
Peter Li says the dog meat festival in a Guangxi city has no place in Chinese tradition and insults the legions of animal lovers in the country
As June 21 draws near, Yulin in Guangxi will once again become a centre of attention for its "Summer Solstice Dog Meat Festival" launched by the dog meat traders in 2000. Promoted as a "cherished tradition", the "festival" has turned the city into a slaughterhouse. It has also made dog eating the city's unpalatable signature brand.
What has shocked the Chinese public more was the official endorsement of the "festival" as a way to attract tourists and investment.
I was in Yulin late last month, my third trip there since last June. What I saw was a city in preparation for the annual massacre. A slaughterhouse at the city's Dong Kou market had just received a new supply of dogs shipped from Sichuan . The unloaded dogs looked emaciated, dehydrated and terrified. Inside two other slaughterhouses hidden in residential areas not far from the market, dogs and cats, many wearing collars, displayed behaviour associated with household pets.
The slaughter is more than an insult to the nation's expanding animal-loving community. The dog meat trade has been sustained by a nationwide dog theft ring. And thefts have led to violent confrontations. In April 2014, two dog thieves were badly beaten up by angry owners in Guangxi.
And, while dog eating may not cause rabies, the handling, slaughtering and processing of a large number of dogs from unknown sources expose traders to a high risk of infection. China ranks second in the total number of rabies cases among humans, and Yulin is a top 10 city for the number of cases in the country.
The transport of the dogs across provinces is intrinsically cruel. As many as 1,000 of them are crammed into suffocatingly small cages, one over another. Denied food and water for days, the dogs suffer from all kinds of illnesses and injuries.