According to a rescue organization, dozens of dogs and cats saved from Chinese slaughterhouses that would have served them as meat arrived in New York this week.
Volunteers from the New York-based No Dogs Left Behind arrived at JFK Airport in Queens on Tuesday with fluffy golden retrievers, curly-haired poodles, and labrador mixes that they claimed were going to be murdered and eaten at a contentious summer festival.
“This is why I risk my life on the front lines: Because this dog would have been dog meat,” Jeffrey Beri, the foundation’s leader, told The Post while holding Bluebell, a poodle.
Never in your life would I allow something like this to endure beatings and torture.
Without their efforts, Beri asserted, the animals would undoubtedly face torture, slaying, and cooking as part of the brutal Lychee and Dog Meat Festival in Yulin, southern China.
Dog meat sellers founded the festival in 2010 to combat declining sales, according to the Humane Society International.
Although attendance at the 10-day festival has fluctuated throughout the years, particularly due to the COVID-19 pandemic, butchers reportedly butchered over 15,000 dogs during its peak.
However, animal campaigners claim that the mistaken belief that their fear hormones enhance the taste of the meat often leads to their torture, burning, boiling, or skinning alive prior to their death.
“So [they] torture, torture, torture,” Beri, 59, of Canton, New York, explained to The Post. “The more you abuse the animal, the tenderer the meat becomes. However, there is no evidence of that. “It’s all myths, and none of them is supported by scientific evidence.”
Activists in China have pushed hard to stop the annual event. In the meantime, they do their utmost to save the dogs and cats from this horrible fate.
Beri described his organization’s complex, militaristic operation, in which drones and teams of local activists and volunteers track and intercept the dog killers’ activities.
“It happens like ‘The Fast and the Furious,'” Beri said, referring to the 2001 film in which a street gang uses hopped-up cars to steal tractor-trailers.
“We will follow the truck with 50 or 60 cars and intercept it,” he told reporters. “Then we’ll call in the news media and government authorities and demand that they provide proof of where the dogs and cats came from.”
“Once they can’t provide that, the fines are more than the cost of the meat,” he added, estimating that they’ve saved approximately 20,000 dogs so far.
“We behave similarly to the military. “We’re an underground army.”
Several volunteers expressed their dismay that somebody would injure the gentle dogs.
“Do you believe these dogs were going to be someone’s dinner?” As the gorgeous puppies emerged from their carriers outside a JFK freight building, Candy, a long-time volunteer, inquired. “Now they have a new life and love to come to.”
Diane Weeks, a Connecticut lady who came to adopt Latte the pug, said she couldn’t believe people still participate in the horrific ritual.
“It’s incredible, when I look at God’s creatures, to think that there’s such evil and ignorance that they can just do that to another creature,” Weeks said in an interview with The Post.
“It’s incredible to me,” she added. “I’m filled with joy, and it’s so sad to think of what [Latte] has been through.”
Beri was shown in a video posted to the group’s Facebook page holding a lovely, frightened golden retriever in his arms.
“You’ll never see another day of hate in your life,” he assured the stunned puppy. “This is the moment we wait for.”
