China’s notorious Yulin Dog Meat Festival opened today despite rumours that authorities would impose a ban this year.
Pictures taken today shows butchers hacking slabs of canines and chefs cooking the flesh in a busy market as the locals celebrate summer solstice with dog meat feasts.
Multiple insiders told MailOnline that the Yulin government issued a ban in May, prohibiting vendors from selling dog meat in the lead-up to the festival.
But the city’s officials later denied the rumours through media, insisting that eating canines was local custom.
After initial reports of the ban, animal rights groups said vendors and officials reached a compromise, setting a limit of two dogs displayed per stall.
But multiple carcasses rested on some stalls at the main Nanqiao market, with stiff pointy tails, leathery yellow skin, eyes shut and bared teeth as if in a final growl.
Behind two long rows of dog butchers, other vendors sold more typical fare like cow tongues and pork hocks and trotters. But even they sold some dog parts, including liver.
The market also features poultry, tanks of fish and vegetables and fruits, including big bundles of lychees.
Lychee, a seasonal fruit, is often eaten during the festival. That’s why the festival is also known as ‘Yulin Lychee Dog Meat Festival’.
However, there was said to be a heavy police presence outside the market and at all intersections.
Outside the market, vendors sold stewed dog meat out of enormous steaming woks, shovelling big portions into plastic bags for passing customers.
Some changed their ‘dog meat’ signs to read ‘tasty meat’ instead. One restaurant put yellow paper over the character for dog.
Another restaurant’s owner surnamed Yang said he sells rice noodle soup in the morning but lunch customers order dog.
‘Business during the festival goes up about ninefold. But don’t worry, we always manage to have enough dogs,’ he said, adding that he planned to sell six dogs a day during the festival.
Dog meat sellers in Yulin have said previously that activists’ protests have actually attracted greater attention and encouraged more people to eat the meat.
‘Despite the fact that there does not seem to be a ban on all dog meat, the festival appears to be smaller this year, with fewer dogs losing their lives to this cruel industry,’ Irene Feng of Animals Asia told AFP.
However, a Chinese animal lover, who calls herself Kimi, told MailOnline that this year’s Yulin Dog Meat Festival was as busy as usual.
‘All the restaurants were packed. In some big markets, dog meat are still being sold in broad day light,’ she said.
Kimi said a group of animal lovers saved 1,200 dogs in Guangzhou on June 19.
Crammed into rusty cages, the animals were said to be transported from Gansu in north-west China to Yulin in southern China as supply to the Yulin Dog Meat Festival.
After the animal overs informed the local authority, it took the officials more than 24 hours to arrive at the scene and help rescue the dogs, according to Kimi.
In May, the Yulin government was said to have informed the local vendors to stop selling dog meat in the lead up to the summer solstice, which falls on June 21 this year. The news was widely reported by media around the world.
Multiple sources confirmed to MailOnline that the ban had been given to the vendors in downtown Yulin orally by the city’s officials.
Apparently, the ban is set to prohibit the sale of dog meat in central Yulin between June 15 and 23, especially in major shops and markets, such as the Dongkou Market.
A spokesman from the Yulin Propaganda Department told The Beijing News on June 15 that the government had never issued a ban on the sale of dog meat.
According to the report, the department insisted that the festival was organised by local residents themselves and was customary.
The department claimed they had never heard of the alleged ban and did not know how overseas media had obtained their information.
It’s been estimated that 10 million dogs are slaughtered for meat in China annually. Many of them are believed to be stolen pets.
The animal is eaten in some other Asian countries, such as Vietnam and South Korea.
The summer solstice is the day to mark the end of the dog meat season in Yulin, according to Dr Peter J. Li, the Associate Professor of East Asian Politics at the University of Houston-Downtown and the China Policy Specialist from Humane Society International.
While commenting on the alleged ban, Dr Li said it was unlikely to stop the dog meat banquets in private homes or at private events on summer solstice.
He explained that Yulin, a city in the largely agricultural Guangxi Province, is spread out and composed of a large rural area, and it would be hard to restrict what the locals eat.
Jill Robinson MBE, Animals Asia’s Founder and CEO, warned that media shouldn’t focus their attention on Yulin in order to stop the dog meat trade in China.
According to Ms Robinson, who has worked in the animal welfare industry for over 30 years, people should look at China as a whole, where some 10 million dogs are slaughtered every year, and many of them are poisoned and stolen from homes or snatched from the streets.
Ms Robinson said that animal welfare education is the key in China.
‘While dog meat eating is legal within China, those wanting to eat in defiance of public opinion and any proposed moratoriums will find a way.
‘What we need now is to make sure the message is heard outside of Yulin, on all the other days of the year when millions of dogs die for their meat.
‘We need to continue working with the authorities, with Chinese organisations and with the public to change opinions and prove that dogs are friends, not food.’
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