The Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China is now well underway and is expected to kill about 10,000 dogs during the controversial event. Due to the controversial and gruesome nature of the festival, a man from Hawaii recently traveled to China to rescue dogs from the slaughterhouses.
Activist Marc Ching of the Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation recently went to Yulin along with his companion Valarie Ianniello to try and disrupt the inhumane festival. In their efforts, they were able to successfully free about 1,000 dogs which were about to be slaughtered for the event.
On his Facebook account, Ching posted graphic videos depicting the terrible conditions that dogs go through in China during this time of the year.
"This is live. This is now," he posted. "The Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, and the Tree of Life - we just rescued over 1,000 dogs from Yulin. A thousand breaths that would die here in the dark. A thousand lives that would bleed like blood left there upon the ground."
"These dogs, they are brothers," he continued. "They are sisters. They are fathers and mothers. They are children. They deserve a chance."
Ching's rescue mission in China was his seventh one to Asia this year. In most of his trips, he usually goes undercover as a dog-meat buyer in order to infiltrate slaughterhouses and this cruel industry.
However, because he is known to disrupt their operations, Ching has experienced getting severely beaten up and hospitalized as he traveled around Asia to shut down slaughterhouses in various countries such as Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia and South Korea.
This experience, however, is not enough to deter him from pursuing his goal of rescuing dogs from certain death and torture, which usually involves getting burned alive using blowtorches or getting beaten by baseball bats as they hang by their necks.
"There's this moment where you come into the slaughterhouse and the dogs are screaming and when you rescue them they know who you are," he told L.A. Weekly. "And it's the most beautiful thing ever. That moment's actually pretty addicting."
