Rep. Alcee Hastings, D-Fla., and more than two dozen other Democrats this week condemned China’s annual Dog Meat Festival, which is held each year and ends up in the death of 10,000 dogs.
“[T]he Dog Meat Festival in Yulin, China, was launched by dog meat traders during the period of 2009 to 2010 as a commercial enterprise to boost flagging sales of dog meat,” Hastings’ resolution on the festival reads.
“[A] reported 10,000 dogs are captured and slaughtered each year for the Dog Meat Festival, and more than 10,000,000 dogs are killed in China each year for the dog meat trade,” it added. “[M]any of these dogs are stolen pets, still wearing collars when they reach the slaughterhouses.”
The resolution says dogs who are captured are usually beaten to death with “shocking brutality,” and also suffer mental anguish by “watching other dogs being killed, then disemboweled and blow-torched in front of them.”
It also said dog meat graders sell meat from “dogs who have died of poisoning by dog thieves or unknown causes.”
The resolution concludes by saying the Dog Meat Festival is a “spectacle of extreme animal cruelty” that threatens public health, and encourages China to impose a ban on killing and eating dogs for the festival.
Read the resolution here:
