In what is not your typical Chinese dog story, hundreds of dogs were spared from being served as the main course in restaurants in China last Friday. Activists managed to stage a 15-hour standoff in order to save them from the dinner table.

Dog and cat meat are both popular and highly prized delicacies in parts of China because they are believed to promote bodily warmth during the winter season, amongst other things.

However, last Friday a suspicious driver swerved his car in front of a truck transporting dogs to stop it. He then alerted activists on his microblog and managed to garner support from approximately 200 people.

They gathered around the truck and managed to render the vehicle immobile, jamming traffic on the highway just outside the capital Beijing.

After a long standoff, two animal activist groups managed to free the dogs by purchasing them for about R117 000.

There are conflicting reports on the actual number of dogs involved, but the Global Times has said the number could have been as high as 520.

Police officers that attended the scene reiterated that the transporters would probably face no ramifications as a result of there being no law against animal cruelty in that country.

Animal protection laws unfortunately barely exist in China and the truck apparently had all the legal permits to transport the animals.

Sadly, many of the dogs were found with collars and nametags which is an indication that they may have been stolen from their owners.

The healthy dogs will supposedly now be put up for adoption while the sick ones were sent to pet hospitals in the nation’s capital.

[Source: TimeNewsFeed]