A Woman Saves 100 Dogs From Being Eaten At A Festival In China

The news traveled the world in recent days. A 65-year-old woman prevented 100 dogs from being slaughtered, so that their meat was later consumed during the development of some festivities in Yulin, a city located in southern China.

Yang Xiaoyun is a retired teacher who traveled over 2,000 kilometers and paid around $1,000 to save the dogs. Xiaoyun will transfer the animals to his shelter in Tianjin, where he houses more than 1,000 dogs.

Other facts behind the story of the woman who saves 100 dogs from being eaten

The Dog Meat Festival has been organized in Yulin since the 1990s to celebrate the summer solstice. During these festivities  , about 10,000 dogs are slaughtered, paying 35 yuan – around US $6 – for each kilo of meat.

And although more and more resistance is generated by organizations that defend animal rights, which argue that the celebration was invented only for commercial purposes, the organizers point out that it is a tradition in the area to eat dog meat at this time of the year.

Groups such as the Humanistic Society International (HSI) and Animal Asia have been working to end this practice. The hashtag # StopYulin2015 circulated widely on social networks  these days, in accordance with the request of different celebrities.

Additionally, on the change.org website, more than four million people called for the killing to stop.

The truth is that Chinese gastronomic culture has peculiarities that, to our western gaze, can seem, at the very least, shocking. Fried insects, camel meat in the Inner Mongolia desert, tiger bone wine in the northern provinces.

However, what has the greatest impact on us is the use of dog and cat meat for human consumption. Although, if we analyze it coldly, this is only an assessment of certain regions that does not have to be accepted as a world rule.

The horror that we feel at events like Yulin’s, those of us who develop emotional ties with felines and canines, to the point of considering them part of our family, can be equated with the horror that practitioners of Hinduism can experience when they see us consume generous portions of beef.

And yet thousands of cows – sacred animals for a good part of the inhabitants of India – are slaughtered daily in slaughterhouses in different parts of the world, without us raising our voices to avoid their slaughter and the use of their meat in the food industry.

Dog meat consumption throughout history

The specific data indicates that there is a record of dog meat consumption in China since the period of the Zhou dynasty, which was located in the northeast of the country, between the year 1050 BC. C and 256 a. Everything seems to indicate then that,  as friendship between man and dogs is ancestral, so is the use of their meat for food.

But this does not mean that the Chinese go through life eating their pets. This practice is traditional in the south, especially in the province of Canton. And while authorities have taken steps to try to avoid it – in order to portray a kinder image for Westerners – since before the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, they have not succeeded.

In addition, China is not the only country where dogs are part of the menu of its inhabitants. They are also eaten in places like Korea, Vietnam, the Philippines, and the Congo.

In Indonesia, for example, the consumption of this type of meat occurs in the Batak Toba culture, where a stew called saksang is prepared , reserved for special occasions.

And, although it may seem strange, in civilized Switzerland, some inhabitants of its mountains still use their meat to make smoked products or sausages.

Without going any further, until the beginning of the 20th century specific butcher shops operated in France to sell dog meat.

In honor of the truth, as long as we humans recognize ourselves as omnivores, we will continue to eat meat from different animals according to the cultural guidelines and customs of each region. And we will also continue to be outraged when we see other humans measure things with a different bar than ours.

Image courtesy of Juanedc.