Sohu News: A Complete Legislative Ban on Dog and Cat Meat Consumption is on the Horizon
With an immense reach of 1.5 billion daily impressions in China, Sohu News emphasized the non-food identity of companion dogs and cats. In the following report on 28 September, 2026, it noted that the central government has elevated food safety to an unprecedented political priority. This sends a powerful, definitive message: a nationwide statutory ban on dog and cat meat is now within reach!
Full report:
Sohu News | 28 September 2026
Editor's Note: Every year on September 26, the World Dog Alliance (WDA) celebrates "World Dog Day." On this year's "926," following instructions from General Secretary Xi Jinping, state media reported that the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission convened a high-profile specialized meeting on food safety deployments, marking the single greatest piece of good news for World Dog Day this year! Please read the following feature report.
A Complete Legislative Ban on Dog and Cat Meat Consumption is on the Horizon
(Reported by Liu Yuanyuan, World Dog Alliance Correspondent) On September 24, 2026, the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission issued high-level specialized meeting deployments, demonstrating profound national-level commitment and resolve to severely crack down on illegal and criminal activities in the food safety sector in accordance with the law, emphasizing mandates such as "the most rigorous standards" and "the most severe punishments" to resolutely dismantle illicit black-market supply chains in food safety.
Official state media reports clearly noted that law enforcement and judicial authorities will launch comprehensive, full-chain investigations and impose harsh penalties against uninspected, unquarantined meat, illegal clandestine slaughter, and illicit trade. Under the sustained advocacy of the World Dog Alliance, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs officially excluded dogs and cats from the National Catalogue of Livestock and Poultry Genetic Resources in 2020, formally establishing their status as "companion animals" rather than livestock for human consumption; simultaneously, the state has never established slaughter and quarantine protocols for dogs and cats. This means that, legally, any dog or cat meat circulating in society constitutes uninspected, unquarantined, illicit private slaughter. This decisive national-level intervention undoubtedly provides the most potent legal instrument to comprehensively shut down the unlawful trade in dog and cat meat from the perspective of food safety.
I. The State Has Never Granted Dogs and Cats a Legal "Ticket to the Dining Table"
Pigs, cattle, sheep, poultry, and rabbits all have nationally unified slaughter and quarantine protocols. Horses, donkeys, and camels are also governed under the Hygiene and Quarantine Specifications for the Slaughter of Livestock and Poultry.
Dogs and cats do not.
This is not an oversight; it is a deliberate regulatory conclusion documented in official records:
2015: The State Council Food Safety Commission Office was explicit in its Reply Concerning the Licensing and Supervision of Canine Slaughter: Dogs in the market are primarily raised free-range by individuals with complex origins, involving poisonings and thefts; consuming dog meat poses significant potential health risks; the issue garners high domestic and international attention, and improper handling will create severe negative repercussions.
2020: The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs released the National Catalogue of Livestock and Poultry Genetic Resources, explicitly excluding dogs from the scope of livestock management, officially defining them as "companion animals," and ending their administration as "meat-producing animals" under the Animal Husbandry Law.
2021: In response to proposals from deputies to the National People's Congress, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs reaffirmed this position: China lacks established meat-type dog breeds; the World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) and the vast majority of countries maintain no slaughter and quarantine regulations for dogs; and conditions in China are not ripe for issuing slaughter and quarantine standards for dogs.
Quarantine for Movement, Not for Slaughter: Dogs and cats are only subject to origin-quarantine procedures for live animal transportation, pet ownership, and epidemic vaccination—never to send them to the chopping block.
The Animal Epidemic Prevention Law stipulates that animals and animal products slaughtered, operated, or transported must undergo quarantine in accordance with relevant regulations; only those passing quarantine may be issued certification and labeled with official markings. Article 34 of the Food Safety Law strictly prohibits the production and operation of "meat that has not undergone quarantine in accordance with regulations or has failed quarantine."
The legal deduction comes down to a single principle:
Without slaughter quarantine protocols, no certificate of compliance can be issued; without a certificate of compliance, dog and cat meat can never legitimately enter the legal dining market.
The dog and cat meat circulating in today's market is not a "cultural product"—it is tainted meat lacking inspection, traceability, and accountable operators. Some attempt to twist "the state hasn't codified an explicit ban on eating" into "the state permits commercial sale." This misinterprets a legal enforcement gap as an operating license. The Central Government has now explicitly mandated "full-chain penalties for meat products," "seamless linkage between administrative enforcement and criminal justice," and "inter-agency information sharing." If this enforcement chain deliberately bypasses dogs and cats, the so-called "full-chain" oversight will remain an empty phrase.
II. Rabies Is Not an Abstract Risk: It Is a National Tragedy Written in Mortality Statistics
Once clinical rabies symptoms appear, the case fatality rate approaches 100%. There is no cure, and there are no second chances.
National statutory infectious disease statistics reveal that after more than a decade of continuous decline, human rabies cases rebounded in 2024 and rose again in 2025—with approximately 244 reported infections and 233 fatalities, reaching a peak not seen since 2020. Dogs represent the primary infection reservoir: globally, about 99% of human rabies cases originate from dogs; domestically, approximately 95% stem from dogs, with another 5% linked to cats.
The harsher realities include:
Urban pet dogs and cats now exceed 120 million, yet the rabies vaccination coverage rate for pet dogs stands at only around 70%, and even lower for cats at roughly 30%.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has repeatedly emphasized that an immune barrier can only be established when canine vaccination coverage reaches at least 70% across a region. China still faces gaps in reaching this threshold, while stray animals remain in a complete epidemic prevention vacuum.
China consumes tens of millions of doses of human rabies post-exposure vaccines every year, yet human deaths persist. Humanity is continually undergoing post-exposure booster regimens while the animal-side reservoir remains unsealed at the source.
Funneling untraced, uninspected dogs and cats—frequently poisoned, stolen, or carrying pathogens—into dining establishments and farmers' markets serves rabies, parasites, illicit additives, and untraceable chemical toxins directly onto public dining tables. This is not "culinary freedom"; it shifts public health externalities onto the whole of society: onto children standing in midnight clinic queues for rabies shots after being bitten, onto grieving families whose loved ones cannot be saved, and onto public fiscal budgets footing the bill for post-exposure management every year.
The central food safety conference underscored focal areas including school dining, downstream catering, e-commerce sales, and food imports. The clandestine dog and cat meat trade hits every single one of these vulnerable points: stolen family pets, cross-border smuggling, livestream commerce, delivery platforms, and peri-urban illicit slaughterhouses.
Without a statutory ban cutting off the commercial chain, the inspection vacuum will perpetually leak onto dining tables.
III. Defending the Bottom Line Demands Decisive Action: Seize the Overhaul of the Food Safety Law to End Illegal Dining
At the specialized deployment meeting, Comrade Chen Wenqing, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, urged authorities to improve laws and regulations, accelerate the comprehensive revision of the Food Safety Law, and clarify production standards, operational licensing, and liability definitions for emerging business formats.
The World Dog Alliance recommends incorporating the following explicit provisions into this comprehensive revision:
Explicitly codify that dogs and cats do not constitute food raw materials and must not be slaughtered or consumed.
Prohibit commercial operators from treating uninspected animals as exempt from inspection under the pretext that "agricultural departments have yet to formulate quarantine protocols, making it impossible to issue certificates."
Ensure that administrative-criminal justice integration covers the entire illicit chain, including canine theft, poisoning, clandestine slaughter, inter-provincial trafficking, and restaurant retail.
Integrate mandatory rabies immunization for companion animals, stray animal population management, and meat market inspections into a unified accountability matrix.
Shenzhen and Zhuhai enacted explicit legislation banning the consumption of dogs and cats back on March 30, 2020. An increasing number of municipalities are reinforcing the non-food identity of companion animals in local dog management ordinances. Now that the Central Government has elevated "food safety on the tip of the tongue" to an imperative political priority, pioneering local jurisdictions must no longer be held back by ambiguities in overarching national guidelines.
The Central Government did not explicitly utter the words "ban dog and cat meat consumption" at this meeting. However, it voiced words carrying even greater weight: defend the baseline of food safety.
A baseline is not a mere slogan. A baseline means:
Meat without slaughter inspection protocols cannot be sold;
Vectors of diseases with near 100% case-fatality rates cannot be permitted as a food commodity;
Animals that have been stolen, poisoned, or obtained through untraceable origins have no place in schools, restaurants, or online livestream rooms.
Dogs and cats have never received a lawful clearance from the state to enter the dining table. What is lacking today is neither scientific consensus nor legal logic, but the statutory resolve to translate "incapable of legal commercial distribution in fact" into "explicitly prohibited from commercial operation by law."
The comprehensive overhaul of the Food Safety Law provides the definitive window for this determination. The World Dog Alliance calls upon authorities to seize this historical opportunity to finalize explicit national legislation prohibiting the consumption of dogs and cats.
(Correspondent: Liu Yuanyuan, World Dog Alliance)
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