Cover image via AP
An estimated 10,000 dogs and cats are tortured, cooked alive and eaten at a festival, to be held this year on Monday, 22 June, in Yulin, a city in southern China, to celebrate the summer solstice. The meat, when combined with lychee and liquor, is said to have good-luck qualities. Below, we're listing down 7 facts you should know.
Slaughterhouse worker hooks a cat by its neck to place it in a wire cage for him.
Image via The Daily Mail
1. Yulin dog meat festival, according to state-run news services, is a tradition that helps combat the heat and humidity of summer. However, activist groups have claimed that the festival started in 2009 or 2010 as a way for dog-meat traders to boost business.
A woman on her moped transports more than 10 dogs, which had just been slaughtered, to her market shop for sale.
Image via The Independent
2. Dogs and cats – sometimes stolen from their guardians and still wearing collars – are stuffed six each into cages so small that they cannot stand up or turn around. The slaughter process includes beatings, throat-slitting, and even burning and boiling dogs alive.
3. The local government has "banned" the festival, but this has been described as "semantics" by activists. As it's not illegal to slaughter dogs or cats in China, the event is expected to continue unofficially.
Pet dogs await their own death in a slaughterhouse, while they watch as others are slaughtered in front of them.
4. Chinese tradition says eating dog meat, which is not considered unusual in China, brings good health and luck. Estimates say 10 million dogs are killed for food every year. Some also believe that eating dog meat can scare away ghosts and disease, as well as heighten men's sexual performance, according to the SCMP.
5. The festival also raises concerns about public health because the practices are unsanitary. Some dogs are poisoned when they're captured. Yulin also has high rates of rabies cases in humans, recording 338 cases between 2002 and 2006, according to VICE.
Chinese vendors transport cages of dogs to be killed and eaten at the Yulin annual summer solstice festival.
Image via Imaginechina/Rex
6. There has been much international condemnation of the annual dog meat festival in Yulin. The past month, there have been nearly a million tweets from people using the hashtag #StopYulin2015.
Image via Ricky Gervais
7. In China, people have come out on both sides of the debate. On Weibo, the Chinese social media, some have spoken out against consuming what Westerners consider pets, according to BBC News, while others said China's local customs must be respected.
Image via Getty
Images by the Associated Press for Humane Society International:
This picture taken on June 17, 2015 shows a butcher preparing cuts of dog meat for sale in Yulin.
Image via AFP/Getty Images
Butchered dogs are seen at a dog meat market in Yulin ahead of a local Dog Meat Festival, Guangxi Autonomous Region, June 17, 2015.
Image via Reuters
A trader cleans de-haired dogs and cats. The dog on top was apparently a pet slaughtered for food, given the breed.
