This is my first time to write something like this after blogging for many years. The reason why I do this because I want non-Indonesian speaking people to know about the news. I took the information from various resources such as: Detik[dot]com, Benarnews[dot]org, CNNIndonesia, etc. Little bit to share, I have felt so frustrated about the high consumption of dogs and cats meat in Indonesia territory. For the past years, not only strays being caught and slaughtered but often pet stolen from their owners and ended in the slaughter house which really is heart-wrecking reality of human greedy. Therefore the moment when I read about the article, there are many emotions mixed inside me.
Below I share the reported news which I have read in Benarnews.
News (credit to Benarnews)
In a victory for animal lovers worldwide, officials on Friday banned the trade in dog and cat meat at an infamous Indonesian market where butchers openly bludgeoned and burned the animals alive with a blow-torch.
The ban in the Tomohon market in North Sulawesi province is among the first in a country where 1 million dogs and cats are slaughtered every year, although most Indonesians, who are Muslim, don’t eat dog meat.
Eating dog and cat meat is a tradition of the ancestors of the Minahasa people, the largest ethnic group in North Sulawesi, but Tomohon officials said they hoped to educate residents about animal cruelty and the health risks associated with eating such meat, including rabies.
“We hope that Tomohon can be completely free from the trade of dogs and cats,” said Edwin Roring, the secretary of Tomohon city.
“Because the way to reduce the interest in consuming dogs and cats in Tomohon is to start by stopping their sales in the market.”
Roring said anyone who violated the ban would face legal sanctions, and that the local authorities would provide alternative livelihoods for former traders of dog and cat meat.
A 2021 opinion poll revealed that 93% of Indonesians support a national ban on dog meat, and that only 4.5% had ever eaten such meat. And yet more than 20,000 dogs and cats are slaughtered every week.
In North Sulawesi, activists say dogs and cats are snatched from the streets and from families, stuffed into crates with their mouths bound shut, transported in appalling conditions and then kept caged in filthy markets.
They are then killed in the most brutal ways, often in front of children who accompany their parents to the market. For instance, butchers take blowtorches to the dogs and cats, while they are alive, to remove hair from their skin, according to Humane Society International, which on Friday rescued 25 dogs and three cats from the Tomohon slaughterhouses.
Humane Society International (HSI) and Animal Friends Manado Indonesia (AFMI), organizations that have campaigned for years to end the dog and cat meat trade in Indonesia, said it also posed a serious risk to human health.
Dogs and cats carry rabies and other infectious diseases, they said.
“North Sulawesi is an epicenter of Indonesia’s cruel and dangerous dog and cat meat trade; the cruelty is obscene and the public health risks from open slaughter and contaminated meat are unparalleled,” said Lola Webber, Humane Society’s director of campaigns, in a statement.
The group, a founding member of the coalition Dog Meat Free Indonesia (DMFI), said it hoped this ban would increase pressure on the government to take more seriously the “enormous public health risk” posed by the dog and cat meat trades nationally.
“We hope that one day there will be no more people in Tomohon eating dogs and cats,” said Frank Delano Manus, an AFMI activist.
“There is resistance, because people believe eating dogs and cats is an important tradition of the Minahasa people that is hard to get rid of,” he said.
Another global animal welfare organization, Four Paws, called for a national ban on the dog and cat meat trade. Karanvir Kukreja, Southeast Asia campaigner for Four Paws, said the Tomohon ban could not have come soon enough.
“The work of DMFI over the past five years has relentlessly exposed that Tomohon Extreme Market was one of the worst animal welfare cases we have seen when it comes to the dog and cat meat trade,” Kukreja said in a statement.
Four Paws said it has collected two million signatures calling for an end to the trade in dog and cat meat across Southeast Asia.
Indonesia is one of several countries in Asia where some people still consume dog and cat meat.
It is estimated that 30 million dogs and cats, including stolen pets, are killed for the meat trade every year in Asia, including an estimated 10 million dogs in Southeast Asia alone, Four Paws said.
My two cents:
For me, the ban of dogs and cats meat trade in Tomohon is alike fresh air and I hope not only in Tomohon but also in all Indonesia territory, I just wish this ban would make into national ban. Indonesia is diversity country, the most populous Muslim country and yet how can more than 200,000 cats and dogs slaughters every weeks. If not because the tradition and human greedy, what should I call this consumption?
Beside Sulawesi, you can find highest consumption of dogs and cats meat in North Sumatera too. Although the practical isn’t as extreme as Tomohon, yet the cruelty still exist in few places in North Sumatera. Often we heard many animal lovers and local activists have spoken up about the shady slaughterhouses (called Lapo) that not only buy dogs and cats from breeding house but also collect the stolen pets. There are few cases happened in here in which pets stolen yet almost no legal process due to the weak law of animal protection in Indonesia. The most desperate thing is, when you are reporting about stolen pet to police, no one would process the case, sometimes they might mock and laugh at the people who made the report until the case goes viral and get netizens attention, then they would do their job, process the case after get pressured by social.
I wish through this post, people can be more compassionate toward animals, after all God isn’t only creating human in this world, as the most ‘advance’ creature, we are responsible take care this world by all means. This post isn’t trying to find who to blame, but more to make it as wake up call to all of us. Our society need to be educated about what kind of meat is proper and improper for consumption after all we are modern people, civilized.
azurro4cielo 