Early dinner for lovers of dog meat
Print Edition
DOG meat lovers in a southern Chinese city under fire for an annual summer solstice festival in which thousands of the animals are slaughtered have held their feasts early to avoid attention.
The festival in Yulin City has been a local tradition since the 1990s.
Some residents gathered last weekend to eat dog meat and lychees in celebration of the longest day of the year, although the summer solstice is actually this Saturday.
The residents wanted to avoid protests by animal rights activists.
In recent years, the festival has been targeted by activists who made the public aware of the event with posts on social media and online petitions.
They then descended on the city to protest outside slaughterhouses or markets where the dogs were being sold.
The public uproar reflects changing attitudes among increasingly affluent Chinese, who keep pets, travel overseas and are beginning to question many traditions previously taken for granted.
Unlike Westerners, who consider them to be “man’s best friend,” dogs in China have long been used only as guard dogs, for hunting, or for food.
The image of dogs in China had been unfavorable for a long time, except in the imperial court where Pekingese were kept exclusively for the royals.
Many proverbs and idioms are associated with dogs, including “pigs and dogs are friends” to describe keeping bad company; “dressed like a person, but acting like a dog” to indicate a lack of social graces; and “the heart of a wolf and the lungs of a dog” to describe people who are heartless and ungrateful.
Many people regard dogs as they do chickens, fish, cows or sheep. The meat is popularly believed to strengthen the body, especially in summer.
Photographs widely circulated on the Internet showed groups of Yulin residents tucking into plates of meat and vegetables around dining tables strewn with lychees.
Other photos were of skinned, cooked dogs hanging from hooks at street stalls or piled on tables.
According to Yulin tradition, eating dog meat and lychees on the solstice ensures good health throughout the winter.
Animal rights activists say the event is a public health risk because the dogs, which they allege are strays grabbed off the street or stolen pets, undergo no quarantine to ensure they are free of disease. The dogs are often poisoned with toxic chemicals that could be harmful to humans, they say.
Deng Yidan, an activist with Animals Asia, said the public backlash was damaging the image of Yulin and China.
“Negative coverage is growing — dog thefts, criminal activities, food hygiene issues, and rabies fears, not to mention the division in society between those for and against the festival — together these have brought significantly more negative publicity to Yulin than economic benefits,” Deng said.
The Yulin government has sought to distance itself from the feasting, saying it was not officially endorsed. It told restaurants to remove references to dog meat from their menus and signboards — though it did not ban the sale and consumption of the meat, which is not illegal in China.
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