In just three days 10,000 dogs will be poisoned, beaten, killed and cooked as part of Yulin, China's annual dog-eating festival. Many of these dogs are family pets stolen from people's homes. Although this festival is in its eighth year, protesting has never been as strong as it is this year, with close to a million #StopYulin2015 tweets leading the way. Animal rights groups around the world are working to stop this year's canine mass murder, including many in China. A China policy advisor for the Humane Society International, Peter Li, had this to say after visiting Yulin last month:
"What I saw was a city in preparation for the annual massacre," he wrote. "A slaughterhouse at the city's Dong Kou market had just received a new supply of dogs shipped from Sichuan. The unloaded dogs looked emaciated, dehydrated and terrified. Inside two other slaughterhouses hidden in residential areas not far from the market, dogs and cats, many wearing collars, displayed behavior associated with household pets.
"The slaughter is more than an insult to the nation's expanding animal-loving community."
The U.S.-based group Duo Duo Animal Welfare Project has collected 700,000 signatures on its online petition. For more details, and to find out about other global petitions click here. Maybe it's not too late to stop this heinous festivity.
