YULIN (China): A Chinese woman has paid over $1,000 to save 100 canines from being eaten during a dog meat festival, media said today, as activists have lashed out at the event labeling it cruel.
Animal-loving Yang Xiaoyun paid about 7,000 yuan ($1,100) to save around 100 dogs in the southern city of Yulin on Saturday, web portal Netease reported.
The city holds an annual festival devoted to the animal's meat on the summer solstice, which has provoked an increasing backlash from animal protection activists.
The city's government has tried to distance itself from the event.
"Some residents of Yulin have the habit of coming together to eat lychees and dog meat during the summer solstice," the city's news office wrote on Sina Weibo, a Chinese Twitter equivalent.
"The 'summer solstice lychee and dog meat festival' is a commercial term, the city has never (officially) organised a 'dog meat festival'," it added.
Eating dog is not illegal in China, but the government called on meat vendors to respect food safety laws.
"Yulin is an open, tolerant and civilized city," it said. "We welcome people across the world to pay attention to Yulin."
As a dog owner and lover I applaud her for that. Dogs are the most wonderful animals to own besides cats. Hope they find good homes if she doesn't keep them.
So what is she going to do with the 100 dogs, keep them in her house? Open a dog shelter? Try to sell them to reimburse her expenses?
With all the food threads on this forum I am surprised no one has commented on eating dog.
I am sure any vegetarian will tell you that eating dog, chicken, pig, sheep, goat, cow, or deer are all equally offensive.
Go to Guanzhou where they eat everything with 4 legs except tables.
I think putting a dog or a bird in a cage who was meant to roam/fly freely is equally or more cruel than eating them. How about a zoo, capturing wild animals and putting them in a cage so the public can be entertained. How would any of us feel if we had to live out our lives in a cage and be deprived of the freedom to walk, run and roam our habitat.
the woman needs t buy that book. 100 ways to wok your dog
That's why dogs and cats need to be neuter and spayed. I think some humans too need to be sterilized. They just don't know went to quit having babies they can't handle and afford.
Good on her. I wouldn't eat dogs myself (as someone who likes dogs and comes from a country where eating dogs is akin to spitting in a grandma's face), but I would tolerate others eating 'spare' dogs if it was done in a way to minimise the animals suffering. China calls itself a civilisation, but allows the barbaric torture of animals. Get some morals, get some animal protection laws, and start enforcing them.
The idea that killing a dog to eat it is somehow more cruel than, say, killing a pig and eating it, is grounded on the simple fact that people tend to like dogs better than pigs - it's not a question of greater or lesser cruelty, but merely one of widespread human attachment to another species.
indeed Alien. Its the torture that is the big problem here.
I doubt if the idea that killing animals to eat is cruel or bad will catch on before vegetarianism becomes almost an ecological necessity - then you'll see a more widespread acceptance - even beyond the huge population of Indian vegetarians - of, and self-righteousness about, the idea that life/death (and not just 'torture') is a moral issue for humans vs. animals.
@liumingke: I won't argue about neutering dogs & cats (is this cruelty?), but it's the human population that is crowding the planet, thanks to all the changes they feel are necessary (since the Industrial Revolution, anyway), which we can now see have been badly managed (pollution, global warming, etc.), not the pop. of dogs & cats, who really don't cause all that much trouble. Note that I'm not advocating the forced neutering of humans.
Some people have don't know went to stop. They need to be told, fined, education, etc. To understand the seriousness of the problem. Stray cats and dogs are dangerous to the population. They can carry rabies or other things like ticks and the like. I agree that we really don't need to eat meat of any kind. But I think there's no turning back from that. Dogs are expensive to care for. One dog is enough maybe two. Some people here have 3 and 4 dogs and have no clue how to raise them.
