Why are animals tortured and eaten at Yulin dog festival

The Yulin “Lychee and Dog Meat” festival is held every year to mark the summer solstice.

The annual ten-day event can be traced back to 2009 and it is believed between 10,000 and 15,000 dogs are slaughtered for the festival.

Yulin as been slammed by animal rights activists who are looking for new ways to pressurise organisers to cancel the event.

Activists say 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.

Why are animals tortured and eaten at the Yulin dog meat festival?

Dog meat is a traditional food in some areas of southern China, where it is believed to be good for the body in warm weather.

Yulin resident Wang Yue told Reuters: “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.”

People in the southern city of China defend eating the meat as it is a way to celebrate the summer solstice.

However animal protection group Humane Society International said in a statement the festival was “manufactured” by the dog meat trade and insists dog meat is not part of mainstream food culture in China.

Eating dogs is not illegal in China with around 10 to 20 million killed for human consumption every year and even thought the festival is new the custom can be traced back at least 400 years.

The Yulin Municipal Government has repeatedly said it is not able to stop the festival as it claims it does not exist as an official event.

Calls from animal lovers to boycott or cancel the festival provoked a defence of local tradition and accusations that activists were disturbing public order.

International animal rights groups say putting pressure on the dog meat trade has become harder after China stepped up scrutiny of foreign groups by requiring them to register with police.

Chinese activists are trying new tactics to convince authorities to end the dog meat trade.

Zhang Huahua, a university professor at the South China University of Technology in Guangzhou province, complained to Yulin authorities that the festival infringed environmental protection regulations.

Zhang said: "The messy slaughter of numerous dogs transported to Yulin without inspection severely damages public order, popular custom and the environment."

Authorities told Zhang her letter would be processed in line with regulations.