If ever there was an obvious target for animal rights activists, the Yulin Dog Festival is it. The festival is a display of barbaric cruelty, with dogs and cats kept in cages (some stolen pets), and tortured to “improve” the taste of the meat. This is a cause that has drawn an immense level of public outcry, especially in the West. These voices (including the late Carrie Fisher and Ricky Gervais) are strident in criticizing the festival for its pure cruelty and senselessness. Of course, this criticism is right: boiling and skinning live animals is intensely cruel and violent. Still, Western critics in particular give local supporters of the festival a rallying cry by being “concerned” members of a public that happily kills and eats other kinds of animals. The shock value of the festival to Westerners can be disingenuous – when the shock of the festival lies in the type of animals that are killed – cats and dogs, rather than that they are barbarically killed. The fact that some of these animals are stray pets is an awful tragedy. But activism against animal cruelty needs to rest on more than disapproval of killing cats and dogs. It needs to stop inhumane killing, find an alternative to cultural practices that glorify bloodshed, and ultimately, end the widespread practice of eating meat. Eating a “bloody steak” or burger exists on the same spectrum that the Yulin Dog Festival does – a totally artificial belief that violence somehow makes our food more life-giving. Locals feel offended that Westerners fail to understand how the poverty of the region apparently contributes to the dogmeat industry.

Without making excuses for the festival, it might be possible to use it as a rallying point to do more in your animal rights activism. If you protest the festival because of the killing of family pets, but eat meat, consider that all life is precious and think about reducing or cutting out your meat consumption. If you protest the festival and have no interest in supporting human or workers’ rights in your home country or abroad, consider whether you are contributing to a problem where violent and impoverished lives form people capable of doing violence to animals. If violence can teach us anything it is that all life is connected. The chain in which people do violence to each other and animals can also become a chain of understanding, care and support if actions are taken that are mindful, peaceful and connected.

To protest the Yulin Dog Festival, read, share and sign the petition – and commit to a non-violent lifestyle!

Further Reading:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/nature/968244/yulin-dog-meat-festival-Peter-Li-days-numbered
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/yulin-dog-meat-festival-china-animal-rights-chinese-culture-western-interference-a7800416.html