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Investigating China’s Infamous Dog Meat Trade

Animal rights activists risk their lives in Yulin, China to show the brutality at a dog meat slaughterhouse.

Paws red with blood, a dog in a Yulin slaughterhouse attempts to climb the walls that close him in.
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There was no sink, no bed, no toilet. The walls of the Chinese jail cell, in which US animal rights activist Wayne Hsiung found himself, were painted a bright blue. The lights were never turned off.

“I thought I could be held indefinitely, particularly when they claimed we were spies from the US government,” Hsiung said during an interview.

In early May of this year, six Chinese interrogators took turns going at him for 15 hours. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. Hsiung, co-founder of the international animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), faced questions about why he had planted hidden cameras at a slaughterhouse in Yulin, China, now infamous for its annual Yulin Dog Meat Festival.

Meanwhile, his activist colleague, Julianne Perry, an MBA student at Dartmouth, faced her own interrogation in the same jail.

“I thought of the suffragettes jailed dozens of times, freedom riders sending dozens of students to be jailed,” Perry said. “I took comfort that I would be in good company if I was kept in jail for speaking out against social injustice.”

DxE co-founder and lead investigator Wayne Hsiung at the Yulin dog meat farm, April 2016. Photo: DxE.

DxE co-founder and lead investigator Wayne Hsiung at the Yulin dog meat farm, April 2016. Photo: DxE.

Hsiung, a lawyer who had taught at Northwestern School of Law, was worried about what would happen not only to Perry, but the third member of his investigatory team, Chris Van Breen, a deeply compassionate activist from San Jose whose day job is working as a plumber and who was waiting for Hsiung and Perry at their rented apartment in downtown Yulin. Just as pressing on Hsiung’s mind was the fate of the three dogs they’d rescued a week earlier from a Yulin dog meat farm.

“My main concern was the safety of the dogs,” Hsiung said.

A week earlier, on April 25, 2016, Hsiung and the other two DxE members had arrived in China to investigate the dog meat trade.

“It was partly redemption,” Hsiung said, explaining one of his reasons for the investigation. “I remember seeing dogs suffering [in China] when I was 9 years old. I wanted to save some because I couldn’t when I was a child.”

***

The Yulin Dog Meat Festival is where more than 10,000 dogs and cats are killed for meat. It has received international condemnation by everyone from celebrities Matt Damon, Joaquin Phoenix and Ricky Gervais to the US Congress and the Chinese people themselves. A hundred thousand Chinese activists marched in the streets to end the dog meat trade earlier this year.

With its brutality and its filth, the festival, begun in 2009, has become symbolic of China’s now declining, mostly unregulated dog meat industry, which is responsible for killing between 10 and 20 million dogs for food annually. Dog meat eaters in China number only about eight percent.

Although some of the dogs are raised on dog meat farms, most are companion animals or strays stolen off the streets according to a four-year investigation of China’s dog meat industry by Animals Asia. Some of the dogs are still wearing their collars at the time of slaughter.

Last year, following protests, the Yulin government distanced itself from the festival. Still, the festival went on this year.

As a Chinese-American who speaks fluent Mandarin and has been investigating farms, breeding facilities and slaughterhouses for 15 years, Hsiung was perfectly suited to penetrate the dog meat trade.

His queries after living dog-meat dogs eventually led him to an outdoor market. Although there were few live animals, Hsiung (with Perry and Van Breen tailing him by about 200 feet) followed the barking of a dog to the back of the market. There he found two small white puppies chained to a poll and a group of seven men, dressed in dirty clothing, sitting around smoking and talking.

“I told them that people in Taiwan all have dogs now, and that my girlfriend wanted one from China,” Hsiung recalled. “I said that I thought it would be really cool and interesting to buy a dog from the dog meat trade.”

The oldest of the group, a sullen man who appeared to be about 50 and who, Hsiung said, was clearly “the ringleader,” said, “There are no dogs here.”

Hsiung tried to ingratiate himself into the group and get the members to show him a dog meat farm. The men, suspicious, put him off. But eventually a younger man agreed to take Hsiung to his farm. The younger man got on a rusty bicycle and the older man, the ringleader, walked to his motorcycle and said to Hsiung, “Get on the back.”

For Hsiung, this was a critical moment. He had no idea where he would be taken, and was worried about leaving Perry and Van Breen on their own. Still, this was his chance to visit a dog meat farm – possibly his only chance.

“Let’s go,” he told the ringleader.

***

The dog meat farm turned out to be a former pig farm. For Hsiung, it was ironic because DxE had recently investigated one of Hormel’s Farmer John farms and documented the horrific conditions.

The owner told Hsiung he had to switch to dogs after he was essentially driven out of the pork business by huge multi-national companies like Smithfield and Hormel. But the owner also told Hsuing that whether he raised pigs or dogs made no difference, to him they were all the same. As Hsiung later said, this was one thing they could both agree on.

Pao at the dog meat farm in Yulin before he was rescued. Photo: DxE.

Pao at the dog meat farm in Yulin before he was rescued. Photo: DxE.

While Hsuing said that farms in the US are much worse that the dog meat farm he saw; but it was still a hellhole of a place: filthy and dilapidated with piles of old wood and other garbage scattered about and a rusty gate leading inside, where Hsiung’s found seven dogs confined in cement-walled pens.

Hsiung returned to the farm with Perry and Van Breen the next day to rescue three dogs, who are brothers and who they later named Pao, Lao and Xiao. “This was death row,” Van Breen said. “Every animal there was born to be murdered.”

The three dogs were covered with fleas and ticks, their skin was red, they were losing their fur and their bellies were distended. The DxE team took the dogs to a vet where they were de-fleaed and de-ticked. With Van Breen and Perry caring for the dogs at the apartment, Hsiung began part two of the investigation at a slaughterhouse in Yulin.

***

The window of a bathroom in the slaughterhouse faced the area where the dogs were beaten and killed. Hsiung lay on the floor, hearing their screams, what he calls “the sounds of evil,” and waited for an opportunity to climb up on a six-foot fence to position small video cameras to document the slaughter. As he lay there, he kept repeating the names of the three brothers, Xiao, Lao, Pao. Xiao, Lao, Pao. It was, Hsiung recalled, “the only way I could maintain my sanity.”

For four nights, the cameras recorded the slaughter. Footage shows a slaughterhouse worker urinating on a dog. Another worker grabs a dog by the throat with huge calipers and then, as he holds the dog, kicks it repeatedly until stops struggling. Another dog, apparently driven crazy by its situation, spins around and around and around. Dogs are crowded together so tightly they have to walk or sleep on piles of sick, lame or dead dogs. Sick dogs are collapsed in a blood and urine filled latrine. Dogs are beaten until they don’t move, and then their throats are slit.

“The violence itself was so shocking, it just numbed me,” said Hsiung, who, along with Perry and Van Breen, viewed the footage on Hsiung’s laptop at their rented apartment. “But when a dog was screaming in terror it hit me like a knife into the gut.”

On the fifth night of the DxE investigation, a woman spotted Hsiung. He was soon surrounded by 12 men who beat him until the woman insisted they stop. The next night, with Perry standing guard, Hsiung headed into the slaughterhouse for the last time to retrieve the cameras. Before he got there he received a text message to get out immediately from Perry, who had been caught by a group of dog meat traders.

“Even when I thought I might be killed — as I was sitting in front of a mob of 16 people, some holding metal poles — the feeling I had wasn’t fear,” Perry said. “It was calm because I knew the cause was worth suffering for. I understood that whatever they did to me would not be as bad as what the animals I was fighting for were going through and I knew we had hundreds of activists back home who would make our death a huge issue to call attention to animal exploitation.”

Soon the police arrived, and took Hsiung and Perry to the Yulin jail to be interrogated.

***

For one six-hour stretch of questioning, Hsiung kept repeating, “Thank you sir, but I would prefer to speak to the embassy before answering the question.” He refused to tell the police where the rented apartment was located, but eventually they figured it out and brought Hsiung and Perry there. Van Breen answered the door and the police ransacked the place, confiscating their laptops, cameras and other items. To the DxE team’s surprise the police had no interest in the dogs. They told Hsiung, Perry and Van Breen they were taking them back to the jail.

“We can’t leave the dogs here,” Hsuing said, and asked if he could see if the landlord would care for them. This was a long shot. The landlord didn’t allow dogs in the apartment. The team had been sneaking the dogs in and out so that the dogs could be walked. Amazingly, the landlord agreed.

Back at the jail, the police forced Hsiung to unlock the laptops. The police deleted all the footage and photos — even footage of the dogs playing in the apartment — and installed an app to shred everything on the hard drive. Eventually the three were released and told they needed to fly back to the US immediately.

Like it or not, the investigation had ended.

***

What the Chinese police didn’t know was that each night except the night of the arrest, Hsiung uploaded the footage to cloud storage. Back in the US, the deleted files and footage on Hsiung’s laptop were recovered.

In late June, video footage taken during the DxE investigation aired on ABC Nightline. It showed dogs in captivity at the dog meat farm in Yulin, but ABC wouldn’t show the footage of dogs being beaten with metal rods at the slaughterhouse before their throats were slit because, according to Nightline, it was “too disturbing to be broadcast under ABC standards.” They did include an interview with Hsiung and Perry talking about the brutality they videoed.

DxE investigator Julianne Perry with rescued dog Lao at the San Francisco 10,000 candles vigil for the Yulin dog meat dogs killed last month. Photo by Michael Goldberg.

DxE investigator Julianne Perry with rescued dog Lao at the San Francisco 10,000 candles vigil for the Yulin dog meat dogs killed last month. Photo: Michael Goldberg.

More than a month since their return to Berkeley, CA, Hsiung, Perry and Van Breen seem in shock from their experiences in China. “It left a tension and fear and anxiety in me that still hasn’t gone away,” Hsiung said. “I wake up sometimes with my heart pounding and sweat pouring off my face.”

Hsiung believes the dog meat trade will end. “It will take concerted domestic action backed by a powerful international coalition [to end the dog trade],” Hsiung said. “The problem in China is domestic activism is very risky. This might be a campaign that is won or lost by international activists.”

###

Michael Goldberg is a former senior writer for Rolling Stone. He is an animal rights activist and a member of DxE. His first novel, True Love Scars, was published in 2014; his second, The Flowers Lied, was published in March 2016.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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32 Comments on Investigating China’s Infamous Dog Meat Trade

  1. The dog meat industry is barbaric, cruel and sadistic. Really not a whole lot different than the meat industry in the US although it feels closer to one’s heart b/c dogs are man’s best friend.

    However, although I am a vegan (most of the time) I do have companion animals–dogs and cats and I do have to buy my animals dog and cat food that have animal protein in the food. I don’t know how to get beyond the meat industry even as a vegan b/c my carnivore and omnivore animal companions are not vegans.

    • Michael Goldberg // July 5, 2016 at 7:16 pm // Reply

      There is vegan dog food such as V-Dog. Pearl, the dog that lives with me, eats vegan dog food and rice and vegan treats like Mr. Barky’s and is very healthy. Cats do need meat… Not much you can do about that. But humans don’t need to eat animals or their secretions. Animal agriculture in the US is far worse that the dog meat trade. So it all must end.

  2. (Dogs don’t need to eat animal meat)
    I don’t see the point of this exercise. Wayne put himself and companion in danger, for what? How should the world react? What is the intended audience? He seems to be implying that the lives of dogs are more valuable than cows, pigs, chickens. All he did was to point out a clash of cultural norms while at home, the public’s conscience is lulled to sleep with visions of cage-free eggs.

    • Michael Goldberg // July 5, 2016 at 7:24 pm // Reply

      Hsiung and Perry and Van Breen did the investigation for several reasons. They want to end the dog trade. They also wanted to be able to see for themselves and tell the world that what is being done to pigs and turkeys and chickens and cows in the US is even worse than what is being done to dogs in China. Also, as Hsiung said in my story, he felt helpless as a kid when he visited China and witnessed dogs who were to be killed and as an adult he could finally do something about it. Hopefully international pressure combined with activists inside China will lead to the end of the dog meat trade. Of course we all want to end the killing of all animals. DxE has investigated chicken and turkey and egg farms and exposed the horrendous cruelty there and brought to light the hypocrisy of Whole Foods and GAP and the whole cage-free thing. This investigation got on ABC Nightline and was seen by millions. All of this will help lead to positive change.

      • Read the Wikipedia entry on the “Lychee and Dog Meat Festival”. This is clearly a cultural preference – no different than ours. If the intention is to raise anger against the Chinese, the logic falls on its face. Why pick on them? The implication is that dogs are more worthy than any other animal. If, instead of being mistreated, the dogs were ritually wined and dined prior to execution, how would the story play out? Would Wayne travel all the way to China to document that scenario?

        This is what the public really hears: OMG they are killing and eating man’s best friend! They are a cruel and pathological people compared to us. We can keep eating our grass fed beef and free range chickens and cage-free eggs.

        I’ve heard Wayne speak and his aversion to promoting veganism as a first line message tells me he is more attracted to the “sport”, the battle, the drama, the excitement of the fight.

        Are the Inuits his next target?

        • Jenna Miles // July 5, 2016 at 10:33 pm // Reply

          One cannot simply ignore important issues because we are afraid of inciting racism, that will only give a free pass. I am equally as disgusted as I would be were they any other animal as are all DXE members. It is something that needs to stop, and we cant be afraid to stop it.

        • Michael Goldberg // July 5, 2016 at 11:23 pm // Reply

          No one is picking on the Chinese. DxE in the three+ years it has existed has spent 99% of its time protesting US businesses that sell animal corpses and animal secretions. So attempting to stop the Chinese dog meat trade is part of working to end the abuse and killing of all animals. DxE is in solidarity with Chinese activists who want to end the dog meat trade. Only 8% of people who live in China eat dog meat. Just because something is done in a culture does not make it right. That goes for animal agriculture in the US, and for animal agriculture in all other countries.

      • Jenna Miles // July 5, 2016 at 10:31 pm // Reply

        Well I think the answer to that is, they saved innocent lives which otherwise would have been snuffed out. It is hardly saying dogs matter more, in fact most of the DXE campaign is centered around the fact that they don’t and they are vehemently against the humane lie.

  3. Gail Calhoun // July 5, 2016 at 5:45 pm // Reply

    Every step towards ending the Dog Meat Trade is important. Valuable, and worthwhile beyond just another story. We all know the Agriculture Industry is changing and domestic U.S. animals have many times more of a chance they will gain relief before these poor dogs will. Judging by the difficulty of this battle, these dogs may never have a chance, so we all have to keep pushing on China. “Boycott all Products from China” is the chant that should ring in the ears of China’s leaders 24/7

    • Can the Chinese now boycott products from the US (what few there are) because we kill cows, pigs and chickens?

      • Lynette Fitzgerald // July 7, 2016 at 7:59 am // Reply

        Paul your amazing. Be in a dogs body, lets just see how okay and ignorant you can be about being blow torched alive for minutes and everytime you try to get up to run, you get clubbed in the head to disorientate you until the next minute you awaken to excruciating pain, you try to run again, and you get clubbed again. Or perhaps your eyes and face gets burnt slowly, or your skinned alive. Or maybe you’d prefer to go being hung upside down, tied by one leg, and walked with a stick until your nice and tender. YOURE A HEARTLESS TWIT!! its the TORTURE WERE OBJECTING TO.
        I CHALLENGE YOU TO WATCH ANY FOOTAGE, THEN YOU CAN PUT THESE AMAZING ANIMAL ACTIVISTS DOWN IF YOU FEEL INCLINED. MY GUESS IS YOU WILL CHANGE YOUR OPINION PRETTY QUICKLY. GEE IM DISAPPOINTED IN PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHO DONT CARE FOR THE PAIN AND SUFFERING OTHERS MAY ENDURE…..AS LONG AS ITS NOT YOU RIGHT?

    • Lynette Fitzgerald // July 7, 2016 at 7:52 am // Reply

      My thoughts exactly Gail 🙂 i just can not believe that any person (good old Paul) can justify the cruelty inflicted upon these dogs, torture should never be accepted.
      Yes we need to fight for right and wrong here now that this filthy trade in now out in the open.

  4. Layne Powell // July 5, 2016 at 9:33 pm // Reply

    This made very hard reading. But I think it is valuable, partly because it might help us in the US to relate it to what happens to the meat on our plates.

    Cats can be vegan. I had a cat live healthily to age 20 (when she was killed by a coyote, tragically) and her diet was Ami vegan cat food. She liked it sprinkled with nutritional yeast, and never complained.

  5. Jenna Miles // July 5, 2016 at 10:34 pm // Reply

    The animal agriculture industry is becoming more secretive and trying to appear better, but it really isn’t. Farmed animals here have it even worse than these dogs. Humane murder, humane separation of mother and child and humane mutilation, especially for products nobody needs, does not exist.

  6. EVERY ANIMALS HAVE TO RIGHT TO SURVIVE IN THE WORLD.THEY HAVE SAME PAIN LIKE US.CHINA IS UNEDUCATED COUNTRY.GOVERNMENT IS CHEAP.BOYCOTT CHINA. PLEASE STOP THIS DISGUISTING, CHEAP TRADTION.

  7. As a South Korean American (who is also vegan), I cannot help but see Yulin’s dog meat issue as one of “You Eat Mongrels When Nothing Else is Left.” Much in the same way that soul food in the U.S. South came out of necessity, so too is consuming dog meat. While I’m not defending dog meat in Yulin, I would just ask that people not immediately condemn this — especially if you’re still eating meat, dairy, chicken or pork.

  8. Animal rights investigations that expose the suffering and abuse of any creature are a step in the right direction of a world rid of such atrocities. I applaud Hsiung, Perry and Van Breen for their dedication and compassion toward another species, the fact that it is a species adored worldwide can only highlight the contradictions human beings show dependant on their culture and compassionate lenient. Knowing there are people out there willing to do what I should be doing myself gives me hope for our species to not being a complete dispassionate dominant. The only way to promote change is to expose – would love to end all slaughterhouses, but for now, give them glass walls.

  9. christine warman // July 6, 2016 at 10:23 am // Reply

    It seems these creatures are not human at all,the way they kill these poor dogs is inhumane,and they themselves are mental cases eating those dogs who are riddled with disease,they whole lot needs to burnt to the ground,hopefully with them in it.What a vile place,they should not be in here in the 21st century,and their so called police are wimps who are frightened to do anything,and a corrupt government I dread to think how all this will end.

  10. marie olsson // July 6, 2016 at 1:23 pm // Reply

    In Asia (and on other continents too, but to a much lesser extent) dogs and cats are skinned ALIVE, boiled ALIVE, blow-torched ALIVE, have their feet cut off and are KEPT ALIVE, have their limbs broken and are KEPT ALIVE, have their eyes gouged out and are KEPT ALIVE, and in many other ways TORTURED FOR UP TO 40 HOURS only to end life by BRUTAL SLAUGHTER, just to make the MEAT TASTE BETTER! In many Asian countries, ALL OF THIS IS 100% LEGAL. THIS is what makes the ANTI-DOG-AND-CAT-MEAT movement DIFFERENT FROM OTHER CAUSES. I believe in the goodness and justness of many causes, but with a day job and family to take care of, I don’t have time to fight for all of them. Instead, I choose the cause for which I believe SENTIENT beings are suffering most and for which SENTIENT beings are LEAST PROTECTED. Watch this videos and read these links to se what goes on in the Dog-and-Cat-Meat Trade http://indy100.independent.co.uk/article/a-brief-list-of-countries-which-eat-dog-meat-the-most–bkSW_v654Z
    http://kore.am/marc-chings-final-trip-to-rescue-dogs-from-asian-meat-trade-driven-by-compassion/
    http://koreandogs.org/
    https://www.animalsasia.org/intl/our-work/cat-and-dog-welfare/what-we-do/tackling-the-meat-trade.html

    http://www.wildlifeplanet.net/the-myth-and-more-importantly-the-truth-about-yulin-and-chinas-dog-eating-history.html#sthash.tmM0GXHQ.dpuf

    Vieos från Korea
    http://youtu.be/vHB3uwB9kyA
    http://youtu.be/MJ1Z4ZT1Sv8
    http://youtu.be/foHCBNllT8w
    http://youtu.be/3uR8R8Mu70Q

  11. Birta Nónfjall // July 6, 2016 at 2:39 pm // Reply

    Stop abuse and killing and eat mans best freind now!!!!!!!

  12. The evil Dog and Cat Meat Trade in ‘meat’, skins, and fur must end. The eating of Dogs and Cats must end.
    As a Vegan, I am opposed to All Animal Cruelty, but the discussion here, is Dogs and Cats. To the forefront, is the insanity of Torture, of these Dogs and Cats, and that is why, this is the very worst Animal Cruelty on this planet. To talk of the evils of western Factory Farming, undermines the Severity of Torture, that the Dogs and Cats are forced to endure in the countries involved in the Dog and Cat Meat Trade. Animals suffer in all aspects of animal agriculture, and it is not my intent to minimize the suffering of one species over another, but to maximize the need to help the poor Dogs and Cats in this cruel and corrupt trade, because what they are forced to endure, is, The Worst Hell On This Earth, and they do not deserve torture, or, misery for their entire lives! Humane Education is badly needed to change how these ‘humans’ think and act. Laws need to be in order, and enforced, to protect these poor animals from torture! Those who commit these vile and atrocious acts, need to be severely punished, because what they do, to these animals, is a Crime of the worst nature! This is what will lead to an end, to this horrible carnage, of these innocent animals. At least, here in the West, there are some laws to protect animals, but there are No Laws, to protect the Dogs and Cats in China, and other Asian countries, they could have much better laws than what do exist. Pressure must be kept, on these countries, towards the end goal of defeating the cruel trade, once and for all!

  13. Sharon Dalessio // July 6, 2016 at 9:09 pm // Reply

    Dogs and cats are domesticated animals they are not wild animals … they shouldnt have to endure abuse , torture they way they are there … here is US we would NEVER kill an innocent dog or cat to put on table for eatting , its just not right … I have cats and dogs who mean the world to me , smarter then people i say …

  14. china is a barbaric land, with a low-level population, superstitious, quite dirty, destroyed by communism, only interested in money…and sex of course (ivory, tiggerbones, …)

  15. Dispicable trade

  16. JN Dauterive // July 7, 2016 at 10:26 pm // Reply

    I applaud the bravery of these three to have subjected themselves to the horror of this and other investigations. They have endured incredible emotional suffering to provide facts and shine daylight on the torture and killing of animals worldwide. Thank you.

  17. Don’t condemn the rest of China for this practise of eating dogs. It is mainly practised in Yulin as a festival each year. Many Chinese are against this and condemn this.

  18. Kathryn Casey // July 8, 2016 at 12:50 pm // Reply

    The salient issue here is the savagery. Debate about our right to eat other creatures aside, our dominance over those creatures carries with it a responsibility to be something other than sadistic and barbaric. These people and others like them are heroic in risking life and limb to expose what goes on both in Yulin and here at home in factory farms. For God’s sake, most of us can’t even watch this horror for a minute from our cozy living rooms.

  19. Are you saying that if the dogs were killed painlessly you would not be as passionate about this issue? How much more “exposure” do we need in order to know right from wrong? It seems that the savagery really isn’t the salient issue as far as the notoriety of the practice. It makes the news because they are eating an “unacceptable” food animal.
    How many decades ago did the clubbing of baby seals story break in the news? They are still being slaughtered. So, in my opinion, rather than pushing the debate about exploiting other creatures aside, as you want to do here, until that fundamental right is accepted, nothing will change.

  20. Robin Shelton // September 6, 2016 at 11:31 am // Reply

    It is important to expose the dog meat trade because 10 billion animals a year are slaughtered in the US and we ( collectively) don’t care because we don’t have pet cows, pigs, chickens, etc.

  21. The whole dog cat meat trade is sick barbaric beyond belief . Korea and China seen to think it’s ok to torture these animals so the meat has more benefits for the sick stupid gullible person eating it . This has to stop .

  22. The whole way orientals view animals is digusting

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