Tag: dog meat

6 People Die After Eating Dog Meat in Cambodia

After chowing down on barbecued dog meat Sunday, six people died in Cambodia. Thirty others were sickened and had to be hospitalized.

Chea Reth, who lives in the Snoul district in Cambodia’s Kratie province, bought the dead dog from another villager, ChannelNews Asia reports. After barbecuing the dog and eating some of its meat, Reth died of acute food poisoning. The other people died or were sickened after eating the dog leftovers at Reth’s funeral.

Four other people died of food poisoning after drinking home-brewed rice wine.

The Kratie provincial health department along with experts from the U.N.’s World Health Organization are investigation the deaths and illnesses.

Health department chief Chhneang Sivutha told the Associated Press that “people in the province have been warned not to eat the meat of animals that have died from illness or poisoning, and not to drink any wine that has not been properly inspected.”

The cause of death of the dog that was barbecued is not known. Unless it was natural causes, the poor dog was probably killed in an extremely cruel way, as are the dogs killed for their meat in China.

“Dog meat is popular in some remote Cambodian provinces as a delicacy, especially when consumed with homebrew white sticky wine,” according to ChannelNews Asia.

Sivutha told the AP samples of the dog meat and wine were collected and sent for testing to the Health Ministry in Phnom Penh.

He said that while food poisoning cases are not unusual in Cambodia, which is one of Asia’s poorest countries, it is uncommon for so many people to get sick at the same time.

As pet dog ownership grows in Asia — as well as awareness of the cruelty of the dog meat trade — the consumption of dog meat is fortunately losing popularity in some countries.

In February 2014, officials from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam agreed to take action to end the dog-meat trade and eliminate rabies by 2020.

“The dog meat trade is undermining rabies elimination efforts in the region,” said Lola Webber, program leader for the Change for Animals Foundation, at the time. “Many dogs carry deadly diseases, such as rabies, and transport conditions increase the possibility of disease exchange.”

Perhaps these deaths will motivate Cambodian officials to step up their efforts to end the dog-meat trade. And as a result of this incident, perhaps many Cambodians will no longer consider dog meat a delicacy, but something to be avoided.

Photo via Facebook

Chinese Woman Buys 100 Pups Headed for Yulin Dog Meat Festival

Like millions of other animal lovers around the world, retired schoolteacher Yang Xiaoyun is disgusted by the annual Yulin Dog Meat Festival.

During this festival, celebrated on the summer solstice each year, meat from about 10,000 dogs (and some cats) — many of them stolen family pets — is enjoyed by hundreds of people.

But unlike nearly 4 million (and counting) other outraged people, Xiaoyun didn’t merely sign an online petition asking the governor to end the festival.

She got in her car and drove 1,550 miles to Yulin in an effort to spare as many dogs as she could from their terrible fate, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) report.

Xiaoyun paid 7,000 yuan (about $1,000) yesterday to buy 100 of the dogs. She brought them to her home in Tianjin, where she runs the “Common Home for All” pet shelter.

This hero is not alone. Other animal lovers and organizations have also traveled to Yulin to demonstrate against the festival and try to save some of the doomed dogs.

The festival has nothing to do with Chinese tradition. It was started only to raise money for dog meat traders by boosting the dwindling sales of dog meat. Although an estimated 10 million dogs are killed for their meat each year in China, eating dogs is actually on the decline in that country.

“I often hear people say that we shouldn’t interfere with tradition, but it isn’t Chinese tradition to brutalize animals in this way,” Peter Li, China specialist for Humane Society International (HSI), said in a news release. “Eating dog meat hasn’t been considered fashionable or decent in China for more than a thousand years.”

Yulin’s Dirty Little Secret Exposed by Social Media

Although the Dog Meat Festival has pretty much flown under the international radar since it was first held in 2010, thanks to social media, it’s no longer Yulin’s dirty little secret.

Celebrities like Ricky Gervais have been tweeting pleas to end the festival, using the hashtag #StopYuLin2015.

“I’ve seen the footage that HSI has captured on video, and it breaks my heart,” Gervais said in the HSI news release.

“I will never forget the look of bewilderment and fear on the faces of these poor animals — the dogs and cats await a horrible fate. No animal deserves to be treated like this.”

About that horrible fate Gervais is referring to: In order to make their meat more tender, the dogs are pounded with clubs while they’re still alive. Their throats are then slit with knives that are often dull, and then they are skinned — again, often while they’re still alive. (A hidden camera captured much of the barbaric process in an extremely graphic Daily Mail story posted today. You’ve been warned.)

Yulin city officials insist the festival is not a sanctioned event.

“The ‘summer solstice lychee and dog meat festival’ is a commercial term, the city has never [officially] organised a dog meat festival;” Yulin’s news office tweeted on the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, according to the AFP.

Four years ago, a similar dog meat festival in Zhejiang’s Jinghua was ended at the urging of Chinese animal lovers. With all the negative attention being bestowed upon Yulin, it’s time for the city to follow Jinghua’s lead and end the slaughter.

How You Can Help End the Yulin Dog Meat Festival

Photos via Facebook; Twitter

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