An estimated 30 million dogs are killed for human consumption each year across Asia in a brutal trade that involves terrible cruelty to animals and often, criminal activity. From 10-20 million dogs are slaughtered in China, 2 million in South Korea, 1 million in Indonesia, and around 5 million in Viet Nam; 80,000 or so of this last group are imported from Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.

Accurate figures are impossible to obtain, as the dog meat trade is entirely unregulated and often, illegal.

The dog meat trade is most widespread in China, South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Laos, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Nagaland in northern India. This trade is well-organized, with high numbers of dogs being stolen or taken from the streets, transported over long distances and brutally slaughtered. In South Korea, dogs are also intensively farmed for the meat trade in appallingly deprived conditions.

Dogs are also known to be eaten in certain African countries such as Ghana, Cameroon, DRC and Nigeria, and there are reports that dogs are killed for personal consumption by some farmers in remote parts of Switzerland, but nothing compares to the sheer scale of the trade across Asia.

A significant threat to human health, the dog meat trade has been linked to outbreaks of trichinellosis, cholera and rabies. The World Health Organisation estimates that eating dog meat increases the risk of contracting cholera 20-fold; a number of recent large-scale outbreaks in Viet Nam were directly linked to it. Rabies—which kills around 39,000 people across Asia annually—has been found in dogs traded for human consumption in China, Viet Nam and Indonesia.

https://e.vnexpress.net/news/perspectives/why-dogs-are-not-meant-to-be-eaten-3793264.htmlhttps://awionline.org/dogmeat

https://www.hsi.org/news-media/dog-meat-trade-faqs/