Adverts urge rejection of cat and dog dishes
Print Edition
Animal rights campaigners have launched a poster campaign urging Chinese diners to reject cat and dog dishes, with the group calling for the creatures to be considered “friends not food.”
The 279 advertisements were put up in 14 cities including Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, campaign group Animals Asia said yesterday.
Cat and dog meat are not widely eaten in China but can be found at some restaurants, particularly in the southern regions, where they are sometimes considered specialities.
But as the country has grown wealthier, pet ownership has increased, and more than 30 million households on the Chinese mainland now keep a cat or dog, according to research group Euromonitor.
Hong Kong-based Animals Asia appeared to be trying to tap into that growing demographic of pet owners.
One poster showed a little girl sitting with two dogs while a human hand aimed a pair of chopsticks at one of the animals.
“What you just put into your mouth could have been a child’s partner in growth,” the advertisement read. “Be healthy. Say no to cat and dog meat.”
According to the website of Animals Asia, the posters, announced earlier this month, intended to inform the public of health risks from eating cat and dog, and were intended “to prompt people to re-evaluate why they’d eat animals they might otherwise consider friends not food.”
China does not have any laws to protect non-endangered animals.
The animal rights movement in the country remains small but it is growing, with volunteers banding together to mount rescues of dogs and cats from trucks transporting them to restaurants where they are served as meat.
A convoy of trucks carrying about 500 dogs to be sold as meat were stopped by volunteers on a highway in Beijing in 2011 and the animals retrieved.
Irene Feng, dog and cat welfare director for Animals Asia, highlighted the uncertainty that accompanies eating such meat.
“The truth is, if you eat dog or cat then you have no idea where that meat is coming from or how safe it is,” she said on the website.
Numerous abandoned cats and dogs are taken from the streets while pets are stolen and taken to “horrific meat markets,” Feng added.
“We believe that, faced with this knowledge, most people would find such a meal entirely unappetising.”
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