8 years investigating canine and cat meat commerce

Since 2012, Animal Equality has been investigating the merciless canine and cat meat and pores and skin commerce, releasing a collection of poignant investigations which have shocked the world.

The tales we now have collected are astounding.

This primary video is an intense investigation into slaughterhouses and canine meat markets within the Leizhou Peninsula and Pengijang Province.

Our investigators have traveled throughout China and, with the assistance of courageous native activists, covertly infiltrated the legal teams that handle the trafficking of canines all through completely different areas of the nation.

Our group captured the pictures in unlawful slaughterhouses—soiled locations with out mercy. In these amenities, canines are crushed, dragged, and handled like objects. They’re confined to darkish rooms the place they reside amongst excrement and are compelled to observe helplessly as their companions are slaughtered.

In two amenities in Jiaxing, Shandong Province, our investigators documented the killing of canines. The animals are first shocked by repeated blows to their heads, after which their throats are minimize, all whereas totally acutely aware.

These are horrible scenes and unimaginable to overlook.

Canine our bodies are offered for his or her meat in markets, whereas their skins are used to make coats, toys, and baggage.

At a market in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province in southern China, Animal Equality investigators discovered that merchants promote carpets manufactured from cat and canine fur, a few of that are produced from the stays of 9 or extra animals.

The pictures obtained by our investigators have been seen by individuals all over the world, and because of the outcry from our footage, 33 markets and an unlawful canine and cat slaughterhouse had been closed by Chinese language authorities.

Pictures of the investigation, together with the information of the closure of the markets and the slaughterhouse, had been aired on the Italian state-owned TV channel TG1.

Due to our shut collaboration with Chinese language activists and legislation enforcement companies, about 600 canines and cats have been rescued.

Right here is the story of a type of animals, a canine named Vita, who was saved from an unlawful slaughterhouse by our investigators:

Animal Sacrifice on the Gadhimai Competition, Nepal, 2014 – 2019

Each 5 years, Nepal hosts the Gadhimai competition, a ritual celebration involving the killing of hundreds of animals.

Thought of the most important sacrifice of animals on the earth, giant numbers of buffaloes, goats, sheep, and birds are brutally slaughtered by devotees as an providing to the Hindu goddess Gadhimai. For over half a decade, Animal Equality investigators have been on the forefront of the trouble to cease this merciless bloodbath.

In 2014, we launched a marketing campaign to ban animal sacrifice in Nepal, asking the temple to carry different rituals that may not contain killing or mistreating animals.

Following relentless campaigning by our activists, the neighboring authorities of Indian determined to undertake a brand new ban that may cease the transportation of animals into Nepal through the Gadhimai competition. This choice was very important in lowering the variety of animals sacrificed, with the 2014 competition sacrificing 70% fewer animals than in 2009.

Sadly, regardless of protests worldwide, the competition happened as scheduled in 2019. Because of this, our marketing campaign to finish animal sacrifice in Nepal continued, and our investigators had been once more on the bottom to doc the bloodbath.

To redirect competition attendees from sacrificing animals, we collaborated with the Pink Cross in Nepal to arrange stations the place devotees may donate their blood (as a substitute of the blood of animals) to pay homage to the Hindu goddess.

Rooster Markets, India, 2017-2018

In 2017, Animal Equality extensively documented the cruelty of the hen meat trade in India. For six months, our group investigated hen farms and markets in Pune, Raigad, and Delhi.

We filmed the horrible circumstances of breeding, transport, and slaughter to which these fragile animals are subjected. In Indian reside animal markets, chickens are stored in tiny cages for days with out meals or water. They’re then killed at these unsanitary markets, with their throats minimize and the birds left to die in agony.

In response to Indian meals security requirements, chickens ought to as a substitute be killed in approved slaughterhouses and shocked earlier than they’re slaughtered. Nonetheless, these requirements are systematically violated normally.

Regardless of India being a traditionally vegetarian nation, hen meat consumption has been growing lately because of fixed political stress and lobbying by giant European firms engaged on increasing their product gross sales into new territories.

The Menace of Moist Markets, China, India, and Vietnam, 2020

In April 2020, in response to the pandemic brought on by COVID-19, Animal Equality launched a brand new investigation with footage collected in moist markets in China, India, and Vietnam.

Moist markets are additionally a menace to world public well being. In these markets, wild and farmed animals reside collectively in cramped, unsanitary cages. The stress from their transport and residing circumstances trigger their immune techniques to weaken, creating the right breeding floor for zoonotic viruses that may make the soar from animals to people.

This was the case with SARS (Extreme Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which was born in a Chinese language moist market, in addition to COVID-19, which many scientists consider originated in a moist market in Wuhan, China.

Together with our investigation, we launched a petition asking the United Nations (UN) to ban moist markets worldwide. To date, the petition has already collected over 500,000 signatures.

In response to the outbreak, China introduced a ban on wild animal commerce and consumption and directed the closure of sure unlawful markets. In Could, our investigative group, together with native undercover activists, went again to China to see for themselves if the markets had certainly been shut down, because the media and the Chinese language authorities reported.

Sadly, the cruelty to animals and menace to public well being that moist markets pose continues, as our footage reveals.