Marc Ching photographed himself beside caged dogs during his 2016 trip to China. He shared images like this on his foundation's Instagram account to show conditions inside dog-meat facilities. Photo: Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, via Instagram.
In June 2016 the American animal-rescue activist Marc Ching said he and his partners had rescued about 1,000 dogs around the Yulin Dog Meat Festival in southern China. The story spread widely and made him a hero to many animal lovers. It also became more complicated than the first headlines suggested: many of the rescued dogs later died of disease, and Chinese animal-welfare groups questioned whether buying dogs from traders helps or harms.
This page explains who Ching is, what the Yulin festival is, what happened to the dogs he helped take out of the trade, and what has changed in China since.
Who Marc Ching is
Ching is a Los Angeles animal nutritionist who ran a pet food business in Sherman Oaks and founded the Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, a California charity. From late 2015 he made a series of trips to Asia, including Cambodia, Vietnam, South Korea, Indonesia and China, to buy or take dogs out of the meat trade and to film what he found. His posts attracted a large social media following and support from Hollywood figures such as Joaquin Phoenix and Matt Damon.
His methods were bold. He reportedly went into slaughterhouses posing as a buyer, sometimes persuaded owners to close in exchange for money, and said he had been threatened and beaten during his trips. In 2016 his foundation said on Facebook that it had helped close several slaughterhouses: "We have shut down six slaughterhouses, have five pending, and are on our way to visit a dozen more." Those numbers came from the foundation and were not independently confirmed.
A dog is led on a lead inside a holding area, with empty cages and a feeding bowl nearby. Ching's team documented places like this as they negotiated to take dogs out. Photo: Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, via Instagram.
The Yulin festival in brief
The Yulin Lychee and Dog Meat Festival is held each June around the summer solstice in Yulin, a city in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Despite the name, it is not an ancient tradition: it was started by local traders around 2009 or 2010 as a commercial event. The city government has said it has no official role, describing dog eating as a local custom followed by a small share of residents.
Early estimates said around 10,000 dogs were killed during the festival each year. Later estimates were much lower, around 1,000 in 2015 and 2016, partly because of public pressure inside and outside China. Across the whole country, groups such as Humane Society International estimate that around 10 million dogs a year are killed for meat, many of them stolen pets or strays.
Opposition is not only foreign. A 2016 poll found that 64% of people in China wanted the festival to end, and a Chinese petition that year gathered millions of signatures. Many of the most committed activists at Yulin are Chinese volunteers.
Dogs crowded into a single metal cage on a wet floor. Crowding like this spreads disease quickly, one reason so many dogs taken from the trade arrive sick. Photo: Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, via Instagram.
The 2016 rescue
Ching said that around 22 June 2016, working with a Buddhist group and local activists, his team took about 1,000 dogs out of slaughterhouses and holding pens. Mashable and other outlets reported the figure, and it quickly became the headline. Ching described this as his seventh trip to Asia to rescue dogs.
The dogs were moved to shelters and foster care, with the plan of treating them and finding homes, some of them overseas. Humane Society International's Wendy Higgins said at the time that rising protest within China, encouraged by campaigns like Ching's, had reduced the number of dogs killed at the festival.
Dogs packed into a round transport cage of the kind used to move animals between markets. Long journeys in cages like these, often across provinces, are part of how the trade operates. Photo: Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, via Instagram.
A frightened dog is held up with a wire loop around its muzzle beside a row of cages. Images like this were central to Ching's appeals for public support. Photo: Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, via Instagram.
What happened to the rescued dogs
A 2017 investigation by the South China Morning Post's Post Magazine looked at what happened next, and the picture was sobering. About two-thirds of the 1,000 dogs had been paid for by two Buddhist organisations and taken to their sanctuaries. Because of the groups' beliefs, the dogs reportedly did not receive vaccinations or medical treatment, and many died of distemper and other diseases within days.
Estimates of the death toll varied. Ching first said about a third had died, and later revised that to under half; volunteers quoted by the magazine said it was closer to two-thirds. About 90 surviving dogs were being cared for by his foundation in Changsha, in Hunan province, and up to 300 were expected eventually to reach homes abroad. There was also a bitter dispute with an American volunteer who had run the Nanning shelter, whom Ching accused of mismanagement.
A woman carries a black dog through a crowd on a street during the festival period, as people film on their phones. Scenes like this, with activists, traders and onlookers side by side, were common in Yulin in the mid-2010s. Photo: Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, via Instagram.
The debate over buying dogs to save them
Ching's approach drew criticism from inside the animal-welfare movement. A statement signed by 35 Chinese animal-welfare groups argued that paying traders for dogs at Yulin raises prices and profits and so keeps the black-market trade going. They urged supporters to back legal change and enforcement against dog theft instead.
Some veteran campaigners also questioned how Ching described what he saw. He said dogs were sometimes tortured for many hours before being killed; others with long experience in the region said that, while conditions are grim, that was not typical, and warned that sensational claims can feed anti-Asian prejudice. John Dalley of the Soi Dog Foundation in Thailand questioned some of his footage, including a claim about an injured dog that Soi Dog said came from road accidents in Phuket, not the meat trade. Ching rejected the criticism and suggested some of it was driven by jealousy.
None of this changes the fact that many individual dogs were saved, but it shows why experienced groups now focus on prevention, veterinary care and law rather than mass purchases.
Ching in tears in a car during his 2016 trip, a photo he shared as he described the toll of the work. Supporters saw it as a sign of his commitment; critics felt his emotional style overshadowed the practical problems. Photo: Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation, via Instagram.
He also shared videos from the trip on his foundation's Facebook page:
(The Facebook video originally embedded here is no longer available.)
What has changed since 2016
The biggest shift came in 2020. During the COVID-19 pandemic China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs published a list of livestock that left out dogs, declaring them companion animals rather than food animals. Yulin also announced restrictions on its dog meat market that year, although the festival went ahead in June 2020 with smaller crowds, and it was still reported to be taking place in 2021.
Eating dog meat is not explicitly banned under Chinese national law, which is why officials have said they lack a clear legal basis to stop the event. But support for the trade appears to be shrinking: a June 2025 survey by Humane World for Animals found that 88% of Yulin residents said a ban would not inconvenience them.
If you want to help, established charities working with Chinese partners on dog-theft enforcement, veterinary care and adoption are a sound place to start, and adopting a rescue dog where you live helps too.
Sources: South China Morning Post, 2017: How Yulin dog rescuer Marc Ching went from hero to hounded; Wikipedia: Yulin Dog Meat Festival; Mashable, 22 June 2016; Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation on Facebook; True Activist (original report). Photos: Animal Hope and Wellness Foundation.
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