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The Chinese, large consumers of pork, are finding it more and more difficult to find it because of the soaring price, due to African swine fever. As a result, more and more people are turning to dog meat.
In China, associations and activists are fighting to ensure that dogs stop being slaughtered for their meat , which is still consumed by many inhabitants of the country. A colossal challenge in the face of a well-established tradition, and which it is today even more difficult for them to take up because of the scarcity of pork .
The numbers of pigs have been experiencing a free fall for several months there. The herd is decimated by the African swine fever epizootic. This has the consequence of skyrocketing the price of pork. It would, in fact, be a question of an increase of 69% over the past year, according to the South China Morning Post . And this trend should not be reversed in the coming months, quite the contrary, as pigs continue to be slaughtered en masse.
In this country, the demand for pork is extremely high. It simply consumes half of the world’s production . Imports, however massive (1.32 million tonnes from January to September 2019), made by the Chinese authorities since the start of this crisis are not sufficient to respond to it.
One of the effects of this shortage is that restaurateurs and consumers are increasingly replacing pork on menus with other meats, including that of dogs or rabbits . Remember that just during the Yulin festival , which takes place every year in June in this southern Chinese city, 10,000 dogs are killed .
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