F E A T U R E
S T O R Y
A Flight to Freedom: The Story o f O n e D o g ’s L u c ky Escape from the M e a t Tr a d e W R I T T E N BY : M I S H A R A C K L I F F, Contributing Writer
April 26, 2020 was the day I had waited months for. Two days earlier, I had received a phone call from Pati Dane, the director at the Dalmatian Rescue of South Florida, telling me that I would finally be able to make the four hour journey to Jacksonville, Florida to pick up my new rescue dog, Emma. As I got in the car that morning and began my drive, I still wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I knew very little about this little spotted dog who had captured my heart with just a single photo on a Facebook post. Emma Roo arrived in the United States in midJanuary of 2020 after spending the first few years of her life in Shanxi Province of China. By some stroke of fate, I accidentally stumbled across the post containing her photo that simply said “will be arriving soon.” I had recently lost my older Dalmatian to old age and had been considering adopting a new companion. It wasn’t until I reached out to the rescue for more information that I learned Emma was a lucky survivor of the inhumane dog meat trade in China. Like many Americans, I was blissfully unaware of the horror of the dog meat trade until Emma Roo came into my life. According to Human Society International, it is estimated that up to 10 million Chinese dogs (and 4 million cats) are slaughtered annually for human consumption. Even more alarming, more than 10,000 of these deaths occur during the annual Yulin Dog Meat Festival,
which spans over the course of 10 days around the summer solstice. The festival, which began in 2009, takes place in the Guangxi province of China and has drawn criticism from animal activists around the world. While festival organizers initially claimed that the animals in question were humanely executed, attendees over the years have uncovered the horrors these animals face. Photos and videos quickly surfaced showing evidence of cruel treatment including reports of brutal torture, dismemberment, and even boiling dogs to death. In many photos, living dogs can be seen neglectfully crammed into small cages awaiting their deaths. At the start of the festival, many believed the dogs being sold for consumption had been bred in a manner similar to that of livestock, meaning they’d been raised on dog meat farms throughout the country. However, according to the Animals Asia Foundation, it is reported that approximately 70% of rural villages in China have witnessed a large number of mysterious dog disappearances,
