Dear Friends
Going to Yulin is extremely stressful and dangerous. Unless you have actually been there, it is almost impossible to explain. The journey alone is long and arduous. Our small team must leave the 700 dogs and cats at our base under the care of just a couple of helpers, then drive from north to south across China. Julia must also travel back from Europe, again, taking multiple planes, trains, and buses alone to meet them. The feeling en route is dread and exhaustion. It is compounded by knowing the funds raised to help the dogs can barely cover the trip, let alone the aftercare of the pups saved.
There is deep depression knowing that nothing has been done in the Guanxi region to stop this heinous practice.
So where is Yulin? Well, it is actually closer to Vietnam than to Beijing. It’s in a province called Guanxi. This region covers 97,000 square miles (around 226,000 square km) and has a population of just over 50 million. On the way down, our team goes through Henan, an area notorious for gangs that run the dog meat truck business, and then into Guangdong, which borders Hong Kong.
Here we meet local animal welfare groups who, like Mr Zhao and our people, are on the ground trying to make a difference. In Guangzhou and Shenzhen, there is no nationwide law to protect dogs and cats, but dog meat restaurants and public consumption are banned. This does not stop small restaurants from popping up, as we have discovered this week, but action can be taken to stop sales, mostly with a fine, so there is still some progress. Here, there is a faint glimmer of hope.
However, when you cross the border into Guanxi, hope is lost. Most people know about state surveillance in China, but in this region, where locals speak their own dialect, they have their own security, and anyone who comes in, even from another part of China, is closely observed.
If you have genuinely visited Yulin and the actual dog meat markets and dog farms—something most big orgs asking for money have not—your details will have been recorded, and you will likely have been followed and, as Julia can attest, roughly handled and taken in for questioning.
This makes it very difficult for our team, who have never abandoned the poor dogs there over the past 14 years, to move around safely.
Our team does not just focus on Yulin. We collect data and evidence from all the main towns in the region where dog meat is sold in fast-food joints and open-air cafes. We also record the brazen, larger slaughterhouses that operate with impunity and the back-street, smaller ones where you find dogs still wearing collars.
We then go up into the hills to no man's land—that is where the dog farms are. We will update you more on this and our findings as the days go on.
To operate successfully and safely, we need to switch our vehicles to motorbikes and use different cards to avoid being constantly tailed. We also need resources for when we do a rescue.
For everyone who has donated to our official fundraiser, we are truly grateful. If you can help more, we really need this money. We are not sitting in some office in the west churning out mail shots for the sake of it, or planning to fly in and out for a guided tour of a pet market and pretending to rescue. We are trying, and continue to try to make a difference, including producing evidence-based reports to submit to the Ministry of Agriculture in China, the UN, food safety departments, governments, the press, and anyone who will listen.
Aside from donating, you can help us by buying a shirt and wearing it, attending our next London event on 20 June, and sharing our posts.
Most progress in animal welfare is halted by apathy and compassion fatigue. If our very own heroes can keep going, however hard so can you !
thankyou for your support
PLEASE DONATE HER VIA THE OFFICIAL FUNDRAISER
https://www.totalgiving.co.uk/appeal/Yulin2026
PLEASE follow us on social media.