Exclusive – Animal Rights Activists: China’s Gruesome Yulin Dog Meat Festival Thrives Post-Pandemic

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023.
Courtesy NoToDogMeat/Animal News Agency
Frances Martel

The end of China’s coronavirus lockdowns, curious Western tourists, and “mass police corruption” have made this year’s Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival, a ten-day outdoor animal slaughter event, one of the biggest ever, animal rights activists — including some currently rescuing dogs in the city — told Breitbart News.

Yulin, in China’s southern Guangxi province, has been hosting the event since 2010, when dog meat traders began using the summer solstice on June 21 to promote their industry. The event typically consists of the establishment of open-air booths and tables in which vendors bus in dogs, and sometimes cats, and kill them alive in public, then cook them through various methods. Both living dogs and carcasses — on tables and hung up, or impaled on the ground — line the streets, offering dog meat for immediate consumption or to take home. Many of the dogs are credibly believed to be stolen pets, illegally seized from heartbroken owners and served as street food.

“They will most likely have been stolen from homes or snatched or poisoned on the streets, very roughly manhandled into holding cages in which they are squashed together and can hardly move, without food or water,” Humane Society International (HSI) Director of International Media Wendy Higgins explained to Breitbart News. “They will have been held for days until a sufficient number of animals is accumulated and then thrown on the back of a truck — hundreds of animals at a time — and driven for days across China to Yulin.”

“By the time they reach Yulin they are in a miserable state, starving, dehydrated, diseased, covered in feces and urine, traumatized and injured. Their ordeal continues at the slaughterhouse where they will witness other dogs around them being caught, bludgeoned over the head, and dragged away to be bled out. It’s horrific,” she continued.

Activists who travel to the event to save animals from slaughter describe the situation as “inhuman” and grotesque, characterized by the putrid smell of rotting body parts and blood in the oppressive heat.

The Yulin Festival became a popular cause for Hollywood celebrities in 2015 and 2016, prompting public statements of condemnation from comedian Ricky Gervais and even Congressional testimony by reality television star Lisa Vanderpump calling for government action against dog slaughter. The Chinese Communist Party responded by toning down publicity surrounding the event significantly. Chinese state media outlets replaced the promotion of dog meat consumption with assurances that Yulin had turned the slaughter event into a “low-key” affair. Slowly, cities began banning eating dog meat. In 2020, following global disgust and condemnation of “wet markets” where unsanitary animal slaughters occur in public — an initial suspect as the origin of the novel coronavirus pandemic beginning in Wuhan, central China that year — Beijing reclassified dogs as “companion” animals and not “livestock.”

The combination of claims to the international community that the Communist Party had suppressed the Yulin event, along with nationwide mass lockdowns and quarantine camp internments in response to the pandemic, created the impression outside of China that the Dog Meat and Lychee Festival was no longer a cause for international concern. The celebrity campaigns ended.

With the end of lockdowns and of global scrutiny — and strengthened efforts by communist authorities to keep the situation from attracting international attention — animal rights activists described this year’s festival to Breitbart News as one of the biggest, and most abhorrent.

“On the main the day of festival June 21st all of the markets will [be] packed and literally overflowing with dead dogs and the incessant sound of chopping. They look like zombies, with dead eyes, mindlessly chopping up dog carcass[es],” Biianka Marie, an activist with the animal rights organization Plush Bear’s Shelter, told Breitbart News from Yulin last week. “The stench is utterly repulsive, the markets here are the most unsanitary and unhygienic places, with no food safety protocols in place, making it a mass threat to public health.”

Biianka described this year’s event as “certainly much busier than last year.”

“Locally they are saying it was the biggest Yulin turnout in years. There were also western tourists in attendance which I found particularly distasteful,” she noted.

The British-based animal rights organization NoToDogMeat/World Protection For Dogs and Cats in the Meat Trade described the situation in Yulin this year as “bigger and crueler than ever.”

“We have seen killing methods at Yulin this year that we haven’t seen for 10 years and have even been warned away by authorities about our presence at the festival, like we are spoiling the fun. We feel like we are losing the fight but will not stop trying to end this cruelty,” Qin Xi Zhao, the head of NoToDogMeat’s dog shelter in Hebei, China, said in a news update by the organization. Qin also noted the presence of international tourists.

NoToDogMeat’s Animal News Agency provided Breitbart News with photos of this year’s dog meat event.

Warning – Graphic Images:

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023.

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023. (Courtesy NoToDogMeat/Animal News Agency)

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023.

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023. (Courtesy NoToDogMeat/Animal News Agency)

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023.

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023. (Courtesy NoToDogMeat/Animal News Agency)

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023.

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023. (Courtesy NoToDogMeat/Animal News Agency)

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023.

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023. (Courtesy NoToDogMeat/Animal News Agency)

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023.

Scenes from the Yulin Dog Meat and Lychee Festival in Yulin, Guangxi, China, June 2023. (Courtesy NoToDogMeat/Animal News Agency)

The Humane Society International similarly confirmed to Breitbart News last week that the Yulin event was at least as big as it was before the pandemic lockdowns began in 2020. Director of International Media Wendy Higgins noted, however, that the festival had lost much of the “festiveness” of prior years, consisting mostly of the buying and selling of meat.

“From observations on the ground I think it’s safe to say that business during the ‘festival’ days has returned somewhat to pre-COVID levels. Business was relatively slow at the markets but steady,” Higgins explained. “The term ‘festival’ is a misnomer because there really are no longer very many elements that resemble a festival at all. The all-night feasting on the streets, restaurants overflowing, public display of dog meat dishes at restaurants — all those things are seldom if ever seen during the festival days after the authorities cracked down on the trade.”

Biianka, from Plush Bear’s Shelter, noted attempts to keep the event from prying eyes abroad.

“They are desperate to keep their inhuman proclivities away from international scrutiny, now more than ever,” she told Breitbart News, describing “mass police corruption” allowing the trafficking in dog meat, which is nominally illegal, but the use of significant law enforcement resources to harass animal rights activists.

“This year our team was flagged by undercover police and questioned at the station for 8 hours. We were released without charge but after that they followed us everywhere and a car would constantly be outside our hotel waiting for us to go out,” the activists narrated. “They even blocked in my car [on] on the day of the festival. Fortunately we had some contacts who could help us fulfill our rescue mission and we made it difficult for them to keep up with all 7 people on our team, we split up to make it work.”

“We believe the authorities are being paid off,” she asserted. “They wasted resources tailing us for days while the real perpetrators get away with horrific cruelty that defies what the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture declared back in May 2020, when the announced the dogs are companion animals and not livestock.”

“No one single dog truck was stopped by authorities this year,” she continued. “They allowed every single on[e] to enter even though they each breach the Animal Epidemic Prevention Law articles 7 and 28, as they cannot prove their origin. Big trucks arrived carrying over 2000 dogs each time.”

Animal rights activists universally emphasize that the dog meat trade does not happen only ten days a year in Yulin, though the festival elevates reports of pet dog thefts and generates interest in dog consumption.

“Yulin is by no means unique, but just one example of a gruesome and cruel trade that impacts the whole of China all year round,” Higgins, of HSI, explained.

“We arrived [on] June 1st to accurately document and it has been bad all month, the festival is really just a visual manifestation of a much larger year-round problem in Yulin and all over China,” Biianka told Breitbart News. “People think that Yulin is only horrifying once a year but it’s daily with no signs of progression. The festival isn’t 10 days like it’s portrayed is media, it’s mostly 2 days and then the killing and number of dead dogs around reverts back to the same numbers we saw since arriving early June.”

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), similarly emphasized in a statement to Breitbart News that dog slaughter is a horror that occurs throughout the year in China.

“Dogs in China are kidnapped, killed, and consumed year-round, and the appetite for dog meat hasn’t faltered, although the Yulin dog-eating festival markedly increases demand for it during its 10-day run,” PETA explained. “We know most people in China are ashamed of this horrid tradition, just as most people in Japan are ashamed of the annual Taiji dolphin slaughter. The hard fact is that it is likely, as long as any animals — whether birds, cows, pigs, or fish — are being killed for food, the Yulin dog-meat trade will continue. Anyone horrified by it should condemn the killing of dogs and all other animals and choose to eat 100% vegan foods.”

The activists speaking to Breitbart News universally emphasized the point that most Chinese citizens do not frequently consume dog meat — and that Chinese citizens are directly involved in difficult and often dangerous dog rescues in Yulin.

“There is very little opposition to a ban on the dog and cat meat trade, which demonstrates that the trade really is just supported and sustained by a small minority,” Higgins told Breitbart News, citing a recent poll commissioned by Vshine, the HSI’s Chinese partner, finding that 81 percent of Yulin residents said they would not object to the city outlawing the dog meat trade.

“It’s important to note that the vast majority of people across China do not support the dog and cat meat trade. This trade is sustained almost entirely by illegal activity,” Higgins continued, “The average Chinese person doesn’t eat dog and cat meat, it’s not part of China’s culinary mainstream, and so when looking at Yulin what we are seeing is the continuance of a dangerous and largely illegal trade happening in broad daylight in defiance of the law and contrary to declarations from the national government about dogs being companions and not livestock for consumption.”

Higgins described multiple “small-scale rescues” occurring this year, as the police prevented any large-scale activity. HSI’s partners reported rescuing 19 dogs so far.

Plush Bear’s Shelter reported rescuing 42 dogs and six cats, double the number they rescued last year.

NoToDogMeat reported rescuing 60 animals, both dogs and cats, from Yulin.

“For any Americans that are outraged we ask them to please email their Chinese embassy to express their outrage,” Biianka told Breitbart News, offering the email address of the Chinese embassy and a campaign to send letters to China pressuring it to abide by its own livestock and meat trade laws.

“It’s harder to expose the festival now more than ever, and feels very much like everyone is against you,” she said.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.

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