Project Longhurst: China’s Yulin Dog Meat ‘Festival’ (HSI)
Chris Broome – Chartered Financial Planner
We promised to bring you regular updates on our corporate charitable giving programme, ‘Project Longhurst’, which aims to support organisations involved in humanitarian, animal welfare, environmental and financial education causes.
The following article from the Humane Society International (HSI), tells of the unspeakable suffering that cats and dogs endure at the annual Yulin festival, and how the HSI and local organisations are battling to end this violence.
The ‘Yulin Lychee and Dog Meat Festival’ was launched in 2009/2010 by dog meat traders in the city of Yulin, in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of China as a commercial venture to boost their dwindling sales. The term “festival” is misleading; in truth there is very little about this week in June that would be recognisable as festivities or celebration. Dogs and cats are killed for meat all year round in Yulin, so the “festival” is really just a week-long escalation of what is an everyday trade in the city.
It takes place every year, starting on June 21 (the summer solstice), during which traders make extra efforts to promote dog meat to local and visiting consumers. Larger than usual volumes of dogs (and other animals) are trafficked into Yulin at this time for slaughter and sale.
Local officials initially endorsed the event, expecting it to attract tourists and boost local development. On the contrary, the festival has been a PR disaster for Yulin, earning national and international condemnation for the annual mass dog slaughter, and the local authorities have disassociated themselves with the event since 2014.
At its height, as many as 10-15,000 dogs were killed for their meat in Yulin during this period, mostly trafficked into the city by trucks sourcing dogs from across China. More recently, as a direct result of national and global pressure, far fewer dogs have been killed during the core days of 20-22 June, now estimated to be around 3,000-5,000 dogs over these days.
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For more information about HSI, visit their website.
