Restaurateurs in the Chinese town of Yulin held an annual dog meat festival, despite international criticism of the event as cruel and unhygienic. As many as 10,000 dogs, many of them stolen pets, are slaughtered just for thier meat.
Dog lover Yang Xiaoyun buys a dog from a vendor, she traveled from her hometown, Tianjin, in northern China to Yulin and spent about 7,000 yuan, buying up 100 dogs at a market in a bid to save them
A vendor display’s dog meat on his market stall in Yulin
A man carrying butchered dogs drives past a pet dog
Animal loving activists use a dog carrying a basket with a message in Chinese ‘Child for sale’ along a street in Yulin to highlight the issuse
Celebrities such as British comedian Ricky Gervais and Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen have called for an end to the festival
A dog vendor carries dogs in a cage on his bicycle in Dashichang dog market on the day of local dog meat festival
A group of friends toast over a dog meat dish despite international criticism of the event as cruel and unhygienic
A dog looks out from its cage at a stall as it is displayed by a vendor as he waits for customers
In the market, some dogs are sold as pets, while others are sold for dog meat.
10,000 dogs are slaughtered and served up as meals, which is often wrongly assumed to be an ancient Chinese tradition
A woman samples dog meat and lychees