IN LATE June, thousands of people throng the streets of Yulin, a city in the southern province of Guangxi, for an annual dog-eating festival. The event is controversial worldwide. Animal-welfare groups claim that 15,000 dogs are inhumanely slaughtered for the occasion every year, most of them pets or strays.
The festival is contentious in China, too. Thousands of people protest online against the festival and demand that dog meat be made illegal, as it has been in Taiwan—in April the island became the first Asian country to ban eating or trading the meat of dogs and cats. Dog-meat sellers in Yulin respond that eating dogs is no different from killing and consuming any other domestic animal. Yulin’s government shuttles back and forth between competing views. Rumours flew that this year it would close down the festival. In the end, it did not. State media quoted local officials as saying they had issued no such order.
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Source: China http://ift.tt/2uPhSS7
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