Organizers of China’s Dog Meat Festival Refuse to Bow to Pressure

These are the only kind of dogs I'm willing to eat.

As has been noted in recent posts at AppleEats, buggy eating seems here to stay. Cricket pizza and tarantula burgers are just a few of the “rite of passage” foods that New Yorkers and American at large are willing to consider when mealtime rolls around.

But we Americans still draw the line when it comes to man’s best friend. Not so certain Asian cultures, where “dog lover” has an entirely different connotation than it does here. One locale that attracts devotees of dog meat is the southern Chinese city of Yulin, which each year hosts a dog meat festival. This year, the event organizers are getting plenty of pushback from real pet lovers and animal rights groups.

Reuters via Yahoo! has the story:

The ten-day event, dubbed the lychee and dog meat festival by residents, has become a lightning rod for dog lovers, who every year confront those who buy, sell and eat canines.

In recent years, animal rights activists have raided slaughterhouses and intercepted truckloads of dogs in efforts to limit the number of animals killed.

Activists say the dog meat trade is inhumane and unhygienic, pointing to videos of dogs caught with wire lassos, transported in tiny cages and slaughtered with metal rods.

“Yulin’s so-called lychee and dog meat festival is just a popular custom of ours. Popular customs themselves cannot be right or wrong,” Yulin resident Wang Yue told Reuters.

“Those scenes of bloody dog slaughter that you see online, I want to say that the killing of any animal will be bloody. I hope people can look at this objectively.”

Festival-goers remain defiant.

I’m the last person to encroach on the civil rights of people and traditions of other cultures. Yet, I can’t quite square the circle when it comes to the defense Wang Yue made to reporters. His argument in fact could be carried to its logical conclusion that cannibalism is fine so long as it’s a “popular custom.”

What’s your take on all of this? Let us know by leaving a comment below. 

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