Yulin Dog Meat Festival 2018 Update

Humane Society International reports from their Chinese activist contacts who have been going to Yulin for many years, that Yulin this year has been a more muted affair. Certainly there have still been the typical scenes of piles of blowtorched dog carcasses for sale on the stalls that are so hard to watch, and dogs and cat are still dying at Yulin in numbers that are hard to comprehend, neverthless the sale of dogs was not observed in the volume of years past, and locals have been saying the same. Many of the dog meat restaurants were busy, but most only until 9 pm and restaurants workerswere often having to call to people on the street to encourage them to come and eat. We`ve heard that the Yulin authorities have been claiming fewer western activists were in Yulin this year, and the's probably true but that's not necessarily a bad thing -many foreign activists have realized that descending on Yulin is not necessarily helping the longer term campaign, and it's far better to support Chinese groups and empower them to create change from within. That strategic shift is important and needs to happen. Also, China's new Foreign NGO Law is preventing many groups from openly operating on the groun in Yulin, placing new restrictions on their movements that we've not seen previously. There is enormous Chinese opposition to the dog meat trade, and the more visible that gets the closer we are to dismantling this dreadfully cruel and crime-fueled trade.