10 million dogs get slaughtered each year for their meat in China
10 million dogs get slaughtered each year for their meat.
That’s a bigger number than the population of New York City. Even though only 20% of the Chinese people claim to eat dog meat, that’s still 280 million people.
Most of the dogs in the dog meat trade are homeless dogs wandering the streets. Others are stolen, poached, or illegally shipped from all over China to a few regions that are known for eating dog meat: Guangdong, Guangxi, and Northeast provinces. In the rural areas of China, dog meat eating is common regardless of the region.
The annual dog meat “festival” in Yulin in June is the most infamous and has come to epitomize the cruelty of the trade due to the barbaric practice of torturing the dogs prior to consumption. During the ten day summer solstice celebration, 10,000 dogs are slaughtered and consumed.
Since the exposure of the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in 2015, there has been a huge international pressure to shut down the Yulin Festival altogether. Nonprofits and NGOs from all over the world have committed extensive resources and effort to rescue, rehab, and rehome these dogs to the U.S. and other parts of the world. It seems like a good idea, but it's expensive, labor intensive, logistically difficult, and a continued hardship on the dogs themselves.
Unfortunately, it is Yulin every day in China.
Over 27,000 dogs and 10,000 cats are slaughtered every day for their meat in China! That’s 10 million dogs and 4 million cats per year.
Yulin maybe the flagship event for the dog meat trade in China to most people in the West, but the brutal killing and cruelty goes far beyond Yulin. In a much larger scale collectively, dogs are SILENTLY tortured and killed everyday throughout the country.
Activities may happen in a large scale slaughterhouse, a hidden home operation, inside a restaurant, or at a meat stand in a rural neighborhood farmer’s market.
Stray dogs are the #1 target for dog poachers.
Almost 1 in 6 homeless dogs in China end up in the hands of dog poachers. With absolutely no one to protect them, dogs are easily captured without a second look from locals or authorities. Due to the abundance of strays, the ease of capture, the low overhead, and high profit of stealing and poaching dogs, there is a huge incentive to go after stray dogs and cats.
We can save and protect stray dogs before they are victimized!
WOA takes a proactive approach. By working with our local sanctuary partners, we can get homeless dogs to safety before they become the victims of the dog meat trade. Not only can we spare them the pain and suffering from the cruelty of the dog meat traders, but also give them better care and let them live a happy, safe, and dignified life.
Join Us to Save Homeless Dogs from Dog Meat Trade