Dear Friends
The last few weeks have been pure hell for our team in Yulin, who are genuinely on the ground and they are still struggling to keep our rescues alive. This weekend we want to share a very insightful account that one of our UK team has written. Julie G. has perfectly understood how so many of us signing this petition and following rescue work from afar feel.
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” I was watching NoToDogMeat live from Yulin when something struck a chord. It brought back something I have been trying to put into words about empathy and the way we sometimes emotionally detach as a way of self-preservation. It made me reflect on something I have been seeing on social media platforms: why comments that come from a place of compassion can so easily be misdirected as anger. Comments like ‘ Why didn’t you save them all. How many did you save ?’
Why does the focus so often fall on the number of lives not saved, rather than the reality of what it takes to save any at all ?
What I have come to realise is that these reactions do not come from a lack of empathy but from an incomplete picture of the reality of actually being on the ground.
Empathy is a curious thing: it is not always shaped by the severity of suffering, but by how far we are removed from it. When we are watching Yulin unfold from the safety of being behind a screen we only ever see a fragment of a more complex reality. The distance can make us feel we have the whole picture when it is only a fragment of what is happening on the ground.
In that gap of understanding we assume what should be done, what could be possible and we can’t fully see how things are. We start to make judgments and we vocalise them loudly.
Distance also makes us forget that there are real life people on the ground, fallible humans just like us. We no longer care about them and see them as vehicles to rescue and help. We forget how far they have travelled to make a difference, how they have had days without sleep and food or a bath. We forget the pain the unbearable pain they are feeling seeing things that can not be unseen and still trying against the odds to save lives.
Many people support large charities with a donation because it’s a way of helping. They feel comfortable not having to identify with real people on the ground. And this is often not because they do not care but it’s all they can cope with.”
NoToDogMeat was created in 2009 after Julia de Cadenet went alone to a dog meat market in China and decided to do something about it. She created a charity, sold her family home to build a shelter and built from the ground a small team of chinese activists who risk their lives and sanity to make a difference. Every year she is at Yulin with Mr Zhao. Every year they face the horrors not just in Yulin but throughout Asia. Our team in the EU/USA and internationally are regular folk who also want to make a difference. We all do what we can and we all help to the best of our capacity. We know how each and every one of you reading this feels. And we must never give up until the cruelty ends.
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To contact us : campaign@notodogmeat.com
our official fundraiser https://www.totalgiving.co.uk/appeal/Yulin2026