Lalog, Adrian D.

2B-BC
Earlier this month, in part of a video campaign released by PETA, actor Joaquin Phoenix spoke outagainst
Chinas dog leather industry, calling it one of the worst things hes ever seen. But what exactly is the
situation of dogs in China?
Indeed, China is home to some of the most despicable treatment of canines and is arguably one of the
worlds worst countries when it comes to animal abuse. Pets are stolen and skinned, their fur sold at home
or abroad (e.g. Canada). Dogs and cats are boiled alive or beaten to death; live animals are used as key
rings; endangered species are ground into nostrums. Shelters, meanwhile, are mostly shams preying on
nave donors and Beijing is historically antagonistic to activists.
For dogs, the wellspring of suffering is the meat industry. Roughly 10,000 dogs are tortured to death
annually at the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, where the tender flesh of puppies is prized. The gruesome
images become provender for shelters looking to save more victims and watch donations swell. Yulin
isnt the only such festival either.
Whats more, butchers dont use captive bolt pistols to knock animals out before exsanguination not
because its prohibitively costly, but because consumers want the animals to suffer as much as
possible, believing this enhances flavor. As one cook put it in the 2010 documentary San Hua, the worse
you treat them the better they taste.
This is, of course, nonsense. Torture triggers fat-to-glucose conversion and lactic acid production, making
the meat chewy and sour. Thats why deer hunters like to drop and dress their animals quickly by landing
a single shot either to the brain or boiler room (i.e. heart-lung cavity). Thats also why humane
slaughter methods are used in making some of the worlds best meats, whether Tajima beef from the
foothills of Kobe, Japan, or acorn-fed Iberian ham.
Dog meats opponents are not out to denigrate Chinese culture. In fact, the very notion that this is Chinese
culture is offensive. Though practiced in China, torturing animals is not a Chinese cultural trait, and such
claims are not only insulting but ignorant of Chinese history, wherein dogs were long considered
companions. For example, The New York Times reports Chinese emperors gave the Pekingese pride of
place, executing any who stole them.
It wasnt until the ideology and starvation induced by Mao that Chinese began to view nature as a mere
resource to be plundered, which is precisely how wildlife was defined in the 1988 Wildlife Protection
Law. Furthermore, sympathy for the downtrodden was considered a Western value and therefore
rebellious, says political scholar and animal rights activist Dr. Peter Li of Humane Society
International.
Thankfully, these attitudes are reversing. In 2011, Beijing activists paid $18,000 to rescue dogs from a
delivery truck after a 15-hour standoff involving police. Last December 800 dogs, many still wearing the

collars their owners had given them, were saved from a compound in Sichuan. There are also
increasing reports of groups like Duo Duo Animal Welfare Project and Welfare For Animals (WFA),
working to bring international standards (and awareness) to the problem. These projects, founded by
Taiwan native Andrea Gung and Canadian Ruby Leslie, respectively, are beacons of hope.
Unfortunately, they are not yet representative of the whole; most shelters are without education, training,
or resources. Capital Animal Welfare took 160 dogs in 2014 but disease prohibited the dogs from being
adopted and, since euthanasia is taboo, most suffered to death. Moreover, CAW never fully paid the
pharmacists or hospitals involved. Similarly, about half of the 850 dogs received by Yantai Headquarters
for Stray Animals Aid died from distemper. As for the 2011 Beijing activists noted above, their group,
China Small Animal Protection Association, was later sued by almost a dozen hospitals for not paying its
bills.
Nevertheless, progress has been substantial. The 2011 Jinhua Hutou Dog Meat Festival was
canceled following public outrage and last years Yulin Dog Meat Festival was held early to avoid
protestors. Also, laws regarding animal testing for cosmetics have shown recent progress and in 2014
Beijing officials issued a new law updating the 1988 definition of the term animal welfare. The
situation is appalling, but China is turning a corner in the way it treats animals and, with the help of
groups like Duo Duo and WFA, it may even pick up a little speed.