On July 21st, 2023, Humane Society International colleagues and their local partners brought the dog and cat meat trade at Indonesia’s Tomohon Extreme Market to an end.
The end of the dog and cat meat traffic at Tomohon is a stunning achievement. Together, with the help of our close partners at Animal Friends Manado Indonesia, we reached an accord with the six dog and cat meat traders still operating at Tomohon and associated with the slaughterhouses that killed dogs and cats to supply the market stalls there and elsewhere in the city and region. The six have committed to forever abandon breeding, trading, production, slaughter or sale of dogs and cats and their meat, and to close out all dog and cat meat facilities and operations, including slaughterhouses and sales of live or butchered animals on Sulawesi and nationwide.
It’s amazing to contemplate. The appalling cruelties dogs have suffered at Tomohon over the years-bludgeoned with wooden bats and, still alive, burned with blowtorches to remove their fur-that’s all over now, forever. And so is the market’s function as a hub for traffickers in dogs and cats for the meat trade on the island of Sulawesi, where the trade flourishes and traffickers collect thousands of dogs for slaughter every week.
Our work at Tomohon and in Sulawesi is not over. We are working with local authorities to secure an official and permanent prohibition on any future sales of dogs and cats (or their meat) at the market.