2023-11-10 18:27:13
01:24 PM
When Dabai, Han Jiali’s kitten, disappeared in Shanghai last year, the young woman searched and searched everywhere until she found a cat meat trafficking network, which served it in restaurants.
In the Asian country, the majority of people do not eat these animals, which does not prevent clandestine networks from killing four million cats every year to sell them for food, according to calculations by the North American animal protection NGO Humane Society. International.
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According to the organization, this illegal market occurs mainly in the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi, in southern China.
For Han Jiali, the search for his pet became a true odyssey, costing him time and thousands of dollars.
This woman discovered an entire supply chain that supplied abandoned cats and also pets that ventured outside the home, in the Shanghai region.
When he found the corpses of cats in front of factories and town restaurants that advertised cat meat on their menu, he had to surrender to the evidence.
“I had to admit that my cat was gone forever,” she says emotionally. “They ate it.” She now wants to prevent other cats from suffering the same fate.
For a year now, he has been helping to prepare police reports, tracking cat thieves and sending requests to the authorities in Guangdong province.
Cat defenders have received death threats
His mission has not been without danger. Han Jiali says he has received death threats from some traffickers, and last December, a man deliberately crashed into his car at a highway rest stop.
“I was afraid and thought about quitting, but if I keep quiet, who will save the cats from this situation?” he asks.
At 33 years old, Han Jiali is part of a small but highly motivated group that fights in China against the abuse of dogs and cats, in the absence of a protective institutional framework. In China, catching a pet that is walking on the street is not considered theft.
And although the law prohibits eating cats, those who fail to comply with the regulations are punished in relation to food safety and not for cruelty to animals.
Activists and some state media commentators are increasingly calling for legislation to protect domestic animals.
Activists feel lacking resources, but sometimes they also have their satisfactions.
Last month, with the help of other activists and local police, Han Jiali led to the seizure of a truck carrying around 800 cats outside Zhangjiagang, near Shanghai. In 2022, another case of the same nature also occurred.
According to him, the cats were captured after being trapped in a cemetery. “By observing them, we quickly understood that they intended to sell them illegally.”
The animals are now in the city of Taicang, an hour from Shanghai, in a shelter run by Gu Ming, 45, and his wife.
Many of the saved cats had broken bones, having been crushed by the weight of the other animals inside the truck, says Gu Ming, who previously worked in the pharmaceutical sector.
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Dozens of them died from injuries or viral infections, which spread rapidly among the cats.
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