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Butchered dogs are transport to a vendor's stall at a dog meat market ahead of a local dog meat festival in Yulin, Guangxi Autonomous Region, China on June 20, 2018. The event is popular with hungry locals who believe the traditional meat is good for the body. It can be traced back to 2009 and it is believed 10,000 dogs – many of them stolen and strays – were killed for previous festivals. But the gala been slammed by animal rights activists who are seeking new ways to pressurise organisers to cancel the annual festival. Residents in the southern city defended eating the meat to celebrate the summer solstice on Thursday. The 10-day event, dubbed the lychee and dog meat festival by residents, has become a symbol of hatred for dog lovers, who every year confront those who buy, sell and eat canines. In recent years, activists have raided slaughterhouses and intercepted truckloads of dogs in efforts to limit the number of animals killed. They branded the dog meat trade is inhumane and unhygienic, pointing to videos of dogs caught with wire lassos, transported in tiny cages and slaughtered with metal rods. Yulin resident Wang Yue said: “Yulin's so-called lychee and dog meat festival is just a popular custom of ours. Popular customs themselves cannot be right or wrong. Those scenes of bloody dog slaughter that you see online, I want to say that the killing of any animal will be bloody. I hope people can look at this objectively”. But animal protection group Humane Society International said in a statement the festival was “manufactured” by the dog meat traders and that dog meat was not part of mainstream food culture in China. The event is not sanctioned by Yulin authorities, but police said their efforts to "maintain stability" had reduced the number of activists in the city this year. (Photo by Tyrone Siu/Reuters)
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