Yulin Dog Meat-Eating Festival Begins Despite Protests From Animal Rights Activists

China’s Yulin dog-meat festival began June 21 despite attempts by animal rights activists to pressurize the organizers to cancel the annual event.

The 10-day festival that focuses on an old Chinese belief of consuming dog and cat to cool blood during summers became a nightmare for animal lovers who have raided slaughterhouses and intercepted truckloads of dogs to reduce the killings.

Animal activists have released videos of dogs caught with wire lassos, transported in tiny cages and slaughtered with metal rods to prove the festival is inhumane and unhygienic.

According to the Human Society International, between 10,000 and 15,000 dogs are consumed during the festival each year.

This year, several rescue groups are trying to save as many dogs and cats as possible while the others are protesting and shaming festival goers on the ground.

Documentarian and rescuer Odessa Gunn said rescuers can stop people taking dogs to slaughter and ask for paperwork to prove the animals belong to them. The dogs can be confiscated if they can’t provide documentation, Newsweek reported.

Allen, an activist, said what he saw at a slaughterhouse that kills up to 50 dogs a day as part of the preparations will haunt him for months.

“I have never seen dogs so scared like these ones. I truly do not understand how the slaughterhouse workers could be so blind to the frightened looks of the dogs waiting for their turn,” he said, the Express reported.

“Most of them were small sized dogs, typical pet dogs, and they were terrified because they had seen the killing of probably 50 dogs that morning. They were friendly but very confused, and all of them were emaciated due to food and water deprivation,” he added.

Despite all the efforts from the activists, festival-goers remain non-compliant.

“Yulin’s so-called lychee and dog meat festival is just a popular custom of ours. Popular customs themselves cannot be right or wrong,” Wang Yue, Yulin resident told Reuters. “Those scenes of bloody dog slaughter that you see online, I want to say that the killing of any animal will be bloody. I hope people can look at this objectively.”

According to the old Chinese belief, more the animal suffers, the greater the benefit and hence the dogs are skinned and burned alive, blowtorched, hung upside down and bludgeoned to death during the festival, This Dog's Life reported.

These animals are either raised in dog–meat farms or stolen from homes.

Jason Baker, vice president of International Campaigns at PETA said, “We have spoken with several people working within the mayor’s office, the food and drug administration and the municipal building and no one seems aware of a Yulin festival ban.”

“However, the government of China keeps on looking for other ways to get away from this. Although the government of China refuses to end this festival, people like us have put in efforts to stop this festival by creating petitions and protests against the festival,” he added, World Animal News reported.

“These young people are China’s future, and a beacon of hope in these dark days as we approach the Yulin dog meat festival, an event that goes against everything these courageous animal champions stand for,” director of international media at Human Society International told the Express.