In the past few years, a huge commotion was stirred when news of the Yulin Festival in China went viral on various social media platforms. People around the world were horrified and many worked to petition the banning of the festival.
The Yulin Festival is an annual festival in the village of Yulin, Guangxi where festival goers feast on dog meat. Not only this, but many of the dogs are abducted from their homes and families. They are then killed in torturous methods such as being burned or skinned alive.
Thousands of dogs are killed and eaten over the 10 days of the festival each year and the Chinese government is finally taking action against the horrendous acts that occur at the festival. The sale of dog meat has been banned starting one week before the festival begins and violators risk fines of 100,000 yuan (~14,000USD) and arrest.
While nothing has been signed into law yet, this ban may prove to pave the way for future action against the dog meat industry.
“Even if this is a temporary ban, we hope this will have a domino effect, leading to the collapse of the dog meat trade,” said Andrea Gung, executive director of the Duo Duo Animal Welfare Project, said in a statement.
The Fight
The fight against the Yulin Festival has not been an understated one. A petition to ban the festival reached 11 million signatures last year. Many celebrities also spoke out against the festival practices, including Sharon Osbourne, Ricky Gervais, Lisa Vanderpump, and the late Carrie Fischer.
“It is embarrassing to us that the world wrongly believes that the brutally cruel Yulin festival is part of Chinese culture,” Qin Xiaona, director of the Capital Animal Welfare Association charity, a Chinese animal welfare group, told the agency. “It isn’t.”
Although dog meat will still most likely be sold in black markets during the festival, this ban will hopefully reduce the total number of dogs slaughtered for consumption. For the first time since the Yulin Festival’s inception 10 years ago, we may finally be making progress towards its complete elimination.
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