Uproar over China’s dog-meat festival

Published Jun 22, 2015

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Shaanxi -

When Peter Li visited a slaughterhouse on the edge of Yulin in China's Shaanxi province, the first thing to hit him was the mixed stench of dirty water, dog hair, blood and blow-torched skin.

Mr Li, China specialist with animal-rights group Humane Society International, had arrived at 6.30am to find that the day's main slaughtering session had already ended.

The internal organs piled on the grubby floor were evidence of this.

“I saw cat and dog intestines and carcasses strung up,” he said.

“Workers were blow-torching the carcasses to make them shiny and ready for shipment to restaurants. There were some dogs still alive in wire cages, but they looked exhausted, emaciated and dirty.”

There has been much international condemnation of the annual “dog-meat festival” in Yulin - in fact, it is the city's summer solstice festival, which takes place this weekend - at which about 10 000 dogs and, more recently cats, are slaughtered for consumption, all washed down with gallons of lychee wine.

A global social-media campaign has taken off in the last few weeks, with the Twitter hashtag #stopyulin2015 used hundreds of thousands of times and a similar Facebook group attracting more than 17 000 “likes”.

Yet the pressure such campaigns exert in China is slight, limited both by the government's dismissive attitude to outside opinion and by the fact that Twitter and Facebook are blocked.

Meanwhile there has been a backlash from domestic “netizens” - Chinese slang for online citizens - against finger-wagging foreigners.

“Dog-meat eating is a custom belonging to other people,” one netizen wrote.

“We should mutually respect each other. If you don't want to eat something, then don't.”

Another wrote: “Let's all protest the Christmas practice of eating turkey!”

The consumption of dogs in China is thought to predate written history.

In the rural south, dog meat is eaten mainly by older people and, according to superstition, it powerfully emits heat, making it popular in winter when it is often eaten as part of a steaming hotpot.

There is no reliable figure for the total amount of dog meat consumed in China, but yesterday a Hong Kong-based NGO, Animals Asia, claimed to have established that up to 10 million dogs are slaughtered for consumption each year.

However, there is growing opposition to the practice even inside China, fuelled by campaigns on domestic social media.

About 350 000 people have taken part in an online discussion forum about the festival on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, where human-rights campaigns are usually suppressed but pro-animal activism is allowed.

Mr Hao, an activist who works with the Small Animal Protection Association in the city of Xi'an, north-east China, and asked to be identified only by his surname, told The Independent: “I wouldn't know about it if it weren't for social media here. Last year many volunteers connected with us and travelled to Yulin to join our protests.”

In 2011 a huge social-media campaign contributed to the banning of a similar dog-meat festival in Qianxi township in Jinhua City, Zhejiang province, that had taken place regularly for 600 years.

In Yulin, the municipal authorities used to endorse the festival but have recently backed off, declaring it no longer an “official” event, and have, however, clamped down on the public slaughter of dogs, resulting in slaughterhouses being moved to inconspicuous locations.

There were scuffles between protesters and vendors at last year's Yulin festival, causing many restaurant owners to remove dog meat from their menus.

“One dog-meat seller in a market ran at us with a knife when we tried to take photos last year,” said Mr Hao.

Food-quality watchdogs in other cities have warned the public not to eat dog meat. The legalities of selling it are hazy, with many protesters claiming public-health violations.

Objectors claim that many dogs sold for food are stolen domestic pets and last year blocked a number of lorries transporting dogs, rescuing them if the sellers did not have valid food-industry licenses.

The public image of dog-meat vendors as bloodthirsty, cleaver-wielding puppy-killers has contributed to a national downturn in consumption.

But Mr Li recounted a meeting with five dog-meat industry workers in Yulin, where he challenged them on their career choices.

“A lady who owned a slaughterhouse told me her teenage son had questioned her about why she couldn't do another job instead,” Mr Li said. “She replied, 'It's our livelihood. Do you think we enjoy it? Absolutely not, but it's what we know how to do.'“

Ms Shan, who has protested at the Yulin event, believes it can only survive another five years.

Meanwhile, she will return each year, driven by anger at the killings she has witnessed.

“I've seen vendors dragging dogs around, then smashing their heads with hammers but not killing them. They say this helps keep the meat fresh,” she said.

“As long as this continues, we'll be back every year.”

But for local dog-meat workers, the moment protests turn physical again this weekend is simply about protecting their livelihood from out-of-town types who don't understand their customs.

“With more activists than ever set to converge, there could be conflict again,” said Mr Li.

“The slaughterhouse owner I spoke to said that some dog-meat workers from other cities would be coming to Yulin to boost support. She's endured protesters in front of her store; this time she's prepared to fight back.”

Additional reporting by Cissy Young.

The Independent

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