Du Yufeng was battered by dog meat traders while trying to save stolen pets bound for slaughter (Picture: Bo Ai Animal Protection Centre)

An animal activist was beaten up by a mob of dog meat traders when she tried to save hundreds of hounds destined for slaughter at China’s Yulin festival.

Du Yufeng, founder of the Bo Ai Animal Protection Centre, ended up in hospital after being battered by armed vendors trying to stop her and two other female activists liberating around 300 mutts penned up in their warehouse.

The pooches were thought to have been earmarked for butchery to cater for the controversial Yulin annual dog meat festival, which started yesterday and usually spans about 10 days.

Ms Du claimed one of her cohorts, aged almost 60, suffered two fractured ribs during the assault while she was left feeling dizzy.




In a letter to the Sichuan government, she described being unable to sleep at night knowing truckload after truckload of canines were being cooped up in tiny chicken cages and ferried for slaughter.

Ms Du had to go to hospital for treatment after being struck to both head and body (Picture: Bo Ai Animal Protection Centre)

She said a fellow activist suffered two fractured ribs during the same assault (Picture: Bo Ai Animal Protection Centre)

Hundreds of dogs are expected to be butchered each day the festival runs despite the fact most Yulin residents don’t eat the meat (Picture : Bo Ai Animal Protection Centre)

‘They are about to reach the gate of hell and clubbed to death, scalded by boiling water, grilled alive and skinned alive. They are so terrified,’ Ms Du wrote.

She urged officials to punish the dog meat traders, MailOnline reports.

According to animal charity Humane Society International (HSI), most dogs and cats caught up in China’s meat trade are believed to be strays snatched from the streets and pets nabbed from people’s gardens, in flagrant breach of the law.

They are then crammed into wire cages and driven across the country to the slaughterhouse where they are beaten to death.

The Yulin dog meat festival is not a traditional holiday and was invented as recently as 2010 by traders seeking to boost flagging dog meat sales.

Before its conception, Yulin had no history of mass dog slaughter and consumption.

Most are strays swept off the streets or pets stolen from backyards (Picture: Bo Ai Animal Protection Centre)

They are kept in tiny squalid cages and driven sometimes hundreds of miles to be killed (Picture: Bo Ai Animal Protection Centre)

The animals are beaten to death in front of each other (Picture: AFP)

The charity’s executive director, Claire Bass, said: ‘The dog meat trade in China is first and foremost about crime and cruelty.

‘The Yulin festival is one small but distressing example of an unspeakably cruel trade run by dog thieves and sellers.

‘They routinely steal pets in broad daylight using poison darts and rope nooses, defy public health and safety laws, and cause horrendous suffering, all for a meat that most people in China don’t consume.’

Customers eating dog meet at the 2017 festival (Picture: AFP)

Around 3,000 dogs will be killed during the core festival days (Picture: AFP)

Most Chinese people don’t even eat dog meat, a bizarre delicacy only occasionally consumed by less than 20 per cent of the population.

Figures from Yulin alone reveal that just over 70 per cent of people living there do not eat it either.

Pressure from inside as well as outside China has seen dog killings drop from 15,000 to 3,000 during the core festival days.

But hundreds still perish each day in the weeks leading up to it.

An estimated 30 million dogs a year are killed across Asia for their meat, with up to 20 million in China alone.

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