Like others I expect, I am immensely impressed by the monumental effort of Jeffrey Beri and his team at the New York-based No Dogs Left Behind charity in rescuing dozens of cats and dogs in China where they were destined to be brutally tortured, then eaten. They were flown from China to New York. That, for me, is remarkable. The commitment. The energy and courage to achieve it. To fight the inertia. I’m sure there must have been many obstacles to overcome.

I believe that society needs to praise Jeffrey Beri and his wonderful volunteers. If he was a UK citizen, I would be lobbying for him to be knighted! He is that good in my opinion.
It is the torture that hurts humankind
The story comes from the New York Post (thank you). Jeffrey Beri, 59, is quoted as saying that without the rescue these animals would have been badly tortured before being eaten in the misguided belief that the meat taste better when the animals suffer tremendously before they are killed.
He said: “So [they] torture, torture, torture. The more you torture the animal, the more tender the meat is. [But] there is zero evidence of that … it’s all myths, and none of this is backed up by scientific evidence.”
This is what really hurts a lot of animal advocates who know about the Chinese cat and dog meat markets. It’s not so much the eating of cats and dogs which some people justify as being acceptable because they are treated like livestock and in the West, we eat animals all the time.
It is the fact that they are so badly tortured and beaten beforehand which makes me wince. And to think that it is going on all the time thousands of miles away as we go about our daily lives. It is entirely unacceptable. It demonstrates a complete disregard for the sentience of these animals.
Volunteers from No Dogs Left Behind went to JFK airport in Queens on Tuesday to collect the animals as they arrived from China.
Jeffrey Beri said: “This is why I risk my life on the front lines. Because this dog would have been dog meat”. He was holding up a poodle named Bluebell, rescued from the jaws of a terrible, hellish death in a country where there are no general animal welfare laws which, I would argue, fosters, in general, a bad attitude towards animal welfare.
China’s animal advocates
In the interest of presenting a balanced report, it must be added that in China there are many Chinese citizens, probably millions, who are concerned about animal welfare. Sometimes the presentation in news media of Chinese animal welfare is somewhat distorted because news media focuses on the gruesome stuff which is understandable as it’s more newsworthy. But we need to recognise the Chinese citizens who care about animals and particularly those who rescue cats and dogs from lorries being driven to the south to the cat and dog meat markets.
These are brave people also deserving of praise and recognition. The New York Post mentions these people. They say that activists in China have fought bitterly to end the annual dog meat festival. It is an annual event held in Yulin, Guangxi, China, during the summer solstice in which festival goers eat dog meat and lychees. The festival began in 2009 and spans about ten days during which thousands of dogs are reportedly consumed.
The New York Post ports that about 15,000 dogs are killed during this festival. A mountain of pain is experienced by the animals. Shame on humankind.
Military operation
Jeffrey Beri said that his charity runs a “complicated, militaristic operation”. I can well imagine that. We are told that he uses drones and teams of local activists and volunteers. They monitor people involved in the dog meat market. They intercept them. He tells us how it happens.
“It happens like ‘The Fast and the Furious’. We will follow the truck with 50 or 60 cars and intercept it,” he said. “Then we bring in news media and government officials, and we’ll demand they provide proof of where the dogs came from, where the cats came from. Once they can’t provide that, the fines levy more than the price of the meat.”
Love and affection
Diane Weeks, a Connecticut woman was there to collect and adopt a pug, ‘Latte’. She said that she could not believe people still engaged in the barbaric practices surrounding the dog and cat meat markets.
She said: “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.”
I heartily agree. She is filled with joy in adopting Latte.
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