In 2020, the commercial slaughter and sale of dog meat was banned in China. Yet animal rights activists claim police rarely act, despite laws strengthening the legislation.
JOSH SAUNDERS: Lifeless bodies lay strewn across the blood-and-urine-drenched floor next to a tank filled with crimson-coloured water – it was nothing short of a crime scene. This is one of many secret slaughterhouses where dogs were being beaten to death, blowtorched and butchered in preparation for the Yulin Dog Meat Festival. The annual event in China, which is used to celebrate the summer solstice, is responsible for the deaths of up to 10,000 canines every year. But the barbarism witnessed by animal rights activists in 2022, far surpasses anything of the horrors they have seen previously.
“Those b******s aren’t human,” Mr Zhao, who’s spent seven years with British charity NoToDogMeat, told The Sun. More than 200 terrified dogs were found in four cramped cages and another four had even more at the slaughterhouse in Baoji, Shaanxi Province. Not far from the bloodbath, was a blacked-out backroom where trays of body parts decomposed and flies and maggots descended. Upon entering the dimly lit section, one police officer fainted due to the heat, stench and stomach-turning scenes before his eyes.
Most chillingly, activists saw a pile of “oozing and bloody intestines” from large canines that were being used to feed the animals waiting in terror on doggy death row. “We have never seen massive rooms filled with rotting flesh nor the horrified looks on the faces of police before,” Julia De Cadenet, NoToDogMeat founder, told The Sun. “There was blood and urine everywhere and carcases of around 40 dogs on the ground – some had been gutted, others were being skinned and blowtorched…
NoToDogMeat estimates that 400 canines could have been killed every day there before being driven 1,200 miles to markets in Yulin and sold for around £29 each. In China alone, between 10 and 15 million dogs are eaten annually and some reports claim up to 50,000 a day. In 2020, the commercial slaughter and sale of dog meat was banned in China following the spread of coronavirus, which has claimed the lives of 546 million people worldwide.
Yet NoToDogMeat activists claim police rarely act – despite bylaws strengthening the legislation and Beijing’s “promising” to open an animal welfare office. “Nothing has materialised,” Julia explained. “Dogs were placed on the ‘white list’ – meaning they are not considered livestock – but the slaughter continues because there is a demand”… Julia said: “The demand for dog meat has not diminished. The trade is a highly-profitable industry with a strong network of greedy restauranteurs, meat dealers and butchers.
“They are only out to make easy money and have convinced some members of the public that eating dog meat is healthy and fashionable… “It’s dangerous and traumatic. I have seen many grown men cry silent tears and to this day the smell and noise of these places stay with me. “The findings from Baoji have even shocked me, I didn’t expect to see the guts of dogs being fed to other dogs. This has got to end”. SOURCE…
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