This is the disturbing moment a dog was boiled alive by laughing villagers in China.

Footage captured on a mobile phone shows the canine, which appears to be wearing a house collar, struggling in a wok of boiling water.

The animal's feet are bound together, but even so the villagers need to used a bamboo pole to hold it down as it writhes in agony.

Horrifying footage from Chinese social media shows a struggling dog with its feet bound together being cooked alive in a wok of boiling water

Activist group Fight Dog Meat uploaded the footage, which appears to have come from Chinese social media, on to their website.

It is unclear where or when the footage was taken.

Michele Brown, the founder of Fight Dog Meat, wrote: 'Cooking the dog in this method would take perhaps an hour for the dog to lose consciousness, and longer again for it to actually die.

The vat is so shallow the dog can’t even drown to meet an earlier death to escape the inflicted agony.

'I find this almost unbearable to watch without wanting to inflict great pain on this man, and his laughing spectators.

'Words have not been invented yet to describe the pain this dog went through, or the depth of the disgraceful behavior all the humans present.'

The animals cries are drowned out by laughing villagers as they hold the canine, which appears to be wearing a collar, down with a bamboo pole

Eating dog meat is practiced in several countries in eastern Asia, including China, Vietnam, the Philippines and Indonesia - though it is not as common as it once was.

Perhaps the most notorious event is the annual Lychee and Dog Meat Festival, which takes place in Yulin, southern Guangxi province, in mid-June.

While the festival used to see between 10,000 and 15,000 dogs killed to satisfy eager customers, today that figure is thought to be as low as 1,000.

Despite the declining popularity of dog meat in countries such as China, it is thought that millions of animals are killed for human consumption each year.