A restaurant in northern China has been criticised by animal welfare groups for offering an unusual item on the menu: lion cub cuddles. According to a screenshot of a menu circulating on social media, Wanhui – a restaurant in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province – has a four-course set afternoon menu costing 1,192 yuan ($166/£124) that includes playtime with the in-house animals. The restaurant’s profile on Dazhong Dianping, a popular restaurant listings app, shows pictures of the lion cubs alongside other animals, such as deer and alligators. The menu…
Tag: Animal welfare
How the global trade in donkey skins threatens the lives of women and girls | Letter
Re your editorial (The Guardian view on China, Africa and disappearing donkeys: an unexpected crisis offers a clue to perils ahead, 25 June), last year, The Donkey Sanctuary revealed at least 5.9 million donkeys are slaughtered for their skins every year to produce ejiao, a traditional Chinese medicine. Donkeys suffer at every stage – from capture and transport to brutal slaughter. With China’s donkey population depleted, the industry has turned to other countries in the global south. Despite its scale, this cruel trade remains largely unregulated and invisible, and it…
World Bank’s funding of ‘hog hotel’ factory farms under fire over climate effect
The private sector arm of the World Bank is facing claims that it contributes to global heating and the undermining of animal welfare by providing financial support for factory farming, including the building of pig farming tower blocks in China. A coalition of environmental and animal welfare groups is calling on the World Bank to phase out financial support for large-scale “industrial” livestock operations. More than $1.6bn was provided for industrial farming projects between 2017 and 2023, according to an analysis by campaigners. The International Finance Corporation (IFC), part of…
‘We keep pets and eat livestock, why not this?’: China’s defiant fur farmers
“Now it’s a bad time to get into the fur business,” says a farm worker in Hebei province, northern China. The worker, who has been farming foxes for more than 30 years, says they have stopped after operating at a loss for several years in a row. China is the world’s biggest producer of animal fur, but here in Suning county, its “capital of fur”, business appears quiet. “The whole industry chain – raw fur and garment production – is struggling,” says the farm worker. An average of more than…
Chinese police stop lorry carrying 386 dogs to slaughter at canine-meat festival – video
Chinese police pulled over a lorry carrying 386 dogs to slaughter at the annual dog-meat festival in the southern Chinese city of Yulin, which was scheduled to start on Tuesday – the summer solstice. Lin Xiong, one of the activists who watched the vehicle being pulled over, said: ‘It was horrifying to see so many dogs in such an appalling state, it was like a truck from hell for these poor animals.’ In 2020, China’s ministry for agriculture and rural affairs ruled that dogs were companion animals, not ‘livestock’ for…