Every year hundreds of thousands of dog are illegal smuggled out of Thailand, across the River Mekong in to Laos and then up to the dog meat restaurants of Hanoi in Northern Vietnam. Thai authorities and NGO’s struggle to patrol and police the porous border. The conditions the dogs are kept transported in are horrendous. Crammed in to small metal cages, sometime up to 15 at a time, they go without food and water for days and as a result many die in the process before reaching the slaughter houses of Hanoi.
With thousands of miles of porous borders, Thailand continues to struggle against illegal cross-border trades. The border with Laos alone is over 1700km long and over half of that is the natural boundary of the River Mekong. Better known is the fight against the illegal drug or endangered wildlife trade. But few know that it is also fighting another battle against a different type of animal trade - that of domesticated dogs.
Currently NGO’s, local officials and the Thai Mekong River navy, as well as groups of concerned citizens, are fighting a continuous battle against the illegal dog meat trade. Stolen and bought dogs are collected throughout the country, and brought together in remote areas of Northeast Thailand. Here, deep in forest hideaways, the dogs are stuffed in to metal cages, before being illegally shipped across the Mekong in the middle of the night, to Laos where they make their way overland, sometimes thousands at a time, up to the slaughterhouses and dog meat restaurants of Northern Vietnam.
In April 2013 alone, almost 2000 dogs were rescued having been caught before being shipped to Laos. The culprits often flee the scene or are given lenient punishments for trying to smuggle hundreds of dogs at a time. How many dogs get past the officials and across the border per year is unknown but is believed to be as high as two hundred thousand.
The epicentre of Thailand’s dog meat is a small town called Ta Rae. Home to a large population of Vietnamese Catholics that arrived here before and during the US-Vietnam war and never returned. Little evidence of the trade can be seen on the town’s streets but it is where the masterminds live, controlling the entire trade. Buying a dog in Thailand can cost as little as US$8 yet are sold in Vietnam for up to US$100, making it an extremely profitable trade and hence very hard to stop.
My work followed the trade route from its source, Ta Rae in Sakhon Nakhon Province in Thailand, across the River Mekong in to Laos and finally to the slaughter houses of Hanoi.
It is difficult to know how to deal with this issue. Whilst Thailand is fighting against the trade from various angles and attempting to strengthen existing laws to try to stop the dogs from being smuggled out of the country, the demand still remains. To stop the dog meat industry as a whole, the culture and attitudes to eating dog meat needs to be changed in countries such as Vietnam. This is no easy task. The Vietnamese have eaten dogs for thousands of years and don’t have the same connection to them as most other nations. To them they are simply animals for consumption as cows are to Europeans.
But until attitudes do change man’s best friend will be subject to horrific conditions, maltreatment and abuse and that’s even before it reaches the slaughterhouse.