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The Quatre Pattes association is struggling to save as many dogs as possible in Cambodia, a country in Asia where canines are mistreated and killed for their meat.
In Cambodia, cynophagia (the consumption of dog meat) is not prohibited . It is even a particularly lucrative market which encourages the worst abuses against dogs .
This was revealed by an investigation recently carried out by the NGO Quatre Pattes , whose veterinary member, Katherine Polak , submitted the results to the country’s authorities. She hopes for concrete action on their part to put an end to this scourge.
Nearly 3 million dogs are slaughtered each year for their meat in Cambodia. The latter is served by over a hundred restaurants in the capital, Phnom Penh , and dozens of others in Siem Reap , a city located near the famous archaeological site of Angkor . These are only the addresses listed by the association during its investigations. There are many more in the country.
To regularly feed these restaurants, dogs are hunted , picked up in the street or even bartered from families for various types of objects, such as kitchen utensils. They are then bought by intermediaries, who in turn resell them to slaughterhouses , where their killing is done in the most cruel of ways: hanging, stunning or even drowning …
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Quatre Pattes still achieved a great victory on October 27 by closing a major slaughterhouse in Takeo province (southern Cambodia) where 2,000 dogs were killed every year . She helped the owner acquire a plot of land to cultivate rice and vegetables, in exchange for stopping his canine slaughter activity.
The NGO also launched a petition against the dog and cat meat trade in Southeast Asia. To date, more than 200,000 people have signed it.
