The Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China, which happens every year on the summer solstice, is a barbaric display of the dog meat trade. This gruesome and vulgar act called a "festival," where some 10,000 dogs are slaughtered and served up as meals, is often wrongly assumed to be an ancient Chinese tradition but only dates back to 2009. Not only are these animals tortured and killed upon arrival, they are abused, beaten, and crammed into small over crowded cages during transport to the festival. Having been starved and suffering from dehydration while enduring many miles in suffocation and isolation, some arrive already dead causing wide spread disease.
As we fight to end this brutality and spread public awareness, people become more educated on not only the cruelty but the health risks of the dog meat, fewer dogs face slaughter. In 2015, 20% fewer dogs were killed at the Yulin Dog Meat Festival. I often wondered what the average Chinese citizen feels about this festival and was happy to read that they find public dog slaughter inexcusable. The global outcry against the festival has been tremendous, dog butchers were forced to hide from public eyes. Local youth held protests at Yulin City Hall demanding an end to the brutality, and activists lined the streets helping to spread word about this despicable act.
The Vanderpump Dog Foundation was formed to aid in ending this international atrocity. Built on a platform of education, legislation, activism and rescue efforts, they hope to end this horrific act forever. One of the goals of The Vanderpump Dog Foundation is to build strong relationships between advocates around the world including mainland China. They are starting with Yulin and the Guangdong Province which are two of the most notorious areas in China for dog abuse. Their passion and hope is that this will create a domino effect in stopping the inhumane treatment of dogs worldwide.
The Vanderpump Dog Foundation is currently working alongside a wonderful Chinese rescue sanctuary, operated by the Shenzhen Dog Protections Association, where The Vanderpump Dog Foundation sponsors 80 dogs rescued from The Yulin Dog Meat Festival.
In 2016, The Vanderpump Dog Foundation helped initiated Resolution 752, that condemns the annual Dog Meat Festival in Yulin, China and also enforces China's food safety laws. The foundation is also working with their partners in the California State government to write legislation in order to further regulate breeding in their state. They are working with state legislators to raise breeding license fees and tighten regulations on this industry, to bring an end to Puppy Mills.