Gruesome evidence of the underground dog meat trade is laid bare in the woods a few kilometres from Tha Rae market in Sakhon Nakhon. Piles of broken dog bones and skulls are scattered on grass which grows high under the shady trees of the northeastern province, once renowned as a haven for dog eaters.
- Photo gallery: Dogs and bones in Sakhon Nakhon (43 photos)
In the stifling midday heat, Pol Lt Lamai Sakhonpitak, a Region 4 special unit officer, uses a twig to disturb the piles of bones. He is looking for some indication that they were dumped recently.
“We have not found new ones. Most of them look like they have been here for several months,” he said. Some of the bones were apparently dumped in sacks, with clumps of fibre stuck to their remains.
Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chalio Chaihung, Pol Lt Lamai’s partner, said dog smugglers frequently dump bones and carcasses in the area. “It is too risky for smugglers to carry dog bones after they have already sold the meat,” he said.
Since the passage of the Animal Welfare Bill in December, police say large dog smuggling trucks are no longer being seen on the roads. But that does not necessarily mean the trade has ended.
“Smuggling drugs is illegal, but people still do it because there is a lot of money to be made,” said John Dalley, vice-president of the Phuket-based Soi Dog Foundation.
“And there is a lot of money in smuggling dogs. So people find new ways to smuggle dogs.”
That fact became evident on Wednesday, when police discovered a pickup truck loaded with dog meat in Sakon Nakhon’s Muang district. It was estimated the load comprised about 100 slaughtered dogs, which the driver told police were destined for market stalls in Tha Rae district.
The haul was somewhat unusual in that the dogs had already been butchered, rather than being transported live.
But experts say that in the wake of the new law, many former dog smugglers have now turned to slaughtering dogs at home to avoid detection. One suspect told police he killed dogs one at a time or in pairs — usually by slitting their throats — to avoid raising the suspicion of neighbours.
Close to the bone: Smugglers have turned to butchering dogs and selling the meat, rather than shipping the animals live. They often dump the bones and carcasses to dispose of the evidence.
A DROP IN THE BUCKET
Asked how long the tradition of eating dog meat had been going on in Sakhon Nakhon, 58-year-old Pol Lt Lamai seemed lost for words. “As far as I can remember,” he eventually replied. Some locals consume dog meat as readily as they eat chicken and beef.
Inspectors believe the smuggling and eating of dog meat is predominantly undertaken by people of Vietnamese descent who live in the Northeast, and say the smuggling of dogs out of the country is sometimes aided by Vietnamese nationals who have ties to Vietnamese communities in Isan.
The trade is propelled by the belief that dog meat can boost human vitality, despite a lack of scientific evidence to back up the claim. Demand has driven up the price of dog meat as high as 500 baht per kilogramme, compared to around 50 baht for chicken.
Dog meat is exported at an even higher price than what locals pay.
In the past decade, a large amount of dog meat from Thailand has been exported through Laos to Vietnam and China. Traders would usually acquire the animals by driving a pickup to remote villages, inviting each household to exchange unruly dogs for water buckets. “Trade dangerous, stubborn and vicious dogs for water buckets, which are more useful than wild dogs,” the trucks would blare from their loudspeaker systems.
But a few years ago — under the glare of public outrage and press scrutiny — authorities began to clamp down on the dog meat trade, partly to prevent the spread of rabies.
Mr Dalley said the Thai Veterinarian Association estimated that an average of half a million dogs were transported from Thailand to Vietnam every year. “This figure is often disputed, [and some argue] that it cannot be that high,” Mr Dalley said.
But the Soi Dog Foundation recently visited a village in Vietnam dedicated to the dog meat trade, where villagers said they used to see dogs being brought from Thailand in large trucks five times a day.
“When you look at the figures, you’ll understand that half a million dogs a year is not an exaggeration,” Mr Dalley said.
He said the villagers told Soi Dog that they no longer received large numbers of dogs from Thailand, but noted that “puts pressure on … more dogs stolen in Vietnam. And that became a social issue there.”
Tricks of the trade: Chusak Pongpanich says some villagers are willing to trade dogs for cash.
DOG DETECTIVES
Despite an absence of large smuggling trucks, the dog meat trade has not been eradicated from Thailand; smugglers have simply gone underground, making it more difficult for investigators to track them.
“We used to follow the barking of smuggled dogs to locate these trucks,” Pol Lt Lamai said.
“But now that many offenders are trading dog meat rather than live dogs, it is more difficult for us to find them.”
In the past few years, the Soi Dog Foundation has distributed more than 1,000 posters in the Northeast, offering rewards to citizens who supply information leading to the arrest of dog traders.
Watchdog Thailand (WDT), the investigative unit of the Soi Dog Foundation, has been working in the Northeast with Region 4 police, under the supervision of deputy commissioner Pol Maj Gen Surapol Pinijchob, to help track down dog smugglers and traders.
On a recent raid early last month in Pone Pra village, in Nhong Khai’s Thabo district, WDT joined forces with officers from Thabo police station after a suspect offered to sell a dog for 400 baht to undercover officers.
According to a WDT source, when the officers visited the man’s home and disclosed their identity, the suspect pleaded his innocence, put a collar on the dog and claimed it was a pet. Police said there were signs that dogs had been slaughtered and butchered at the premises.
“From the WDT’s investigation, it was clear this slaughterhouse was one of the stopping points on the main route to the Vietnamese community in Thabo district,” the source said. “Some [of the dogs] were also being exported to Laos and Vietnam.”
The officers confiscated the dog and are preparing charges against the man under the Animal Welfare Law and the Contagious Diseases Act, the WDT volunteer added.
Pol Lt Lamai and Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chalio also went undercover last month in Ban Putong, Udon Thani province, after receiving a tip-off from a local informant.
The pair told the seller they wanted to buy 11kg of “heavenly meat”. The seller said it would cost them 100 baht per kilogramme, before leading them behind the shop. There, the seller opened a large fridge which contained individually packaged pieces of dog meat priced at 70 baht each. At that moment, Pol Lt Lamai and Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chalio showed their police badges. The seller tried to escape, but three officers from the local police station were lying in wait to help make the arrest.
The seller later told investigators that the dog meat trade is her family business. She said her husband travels to nearby villages to search for dogs, which he then keeps in cages in their backyard. The family slaughters most of the dogs before selling the meat to the local community. The rest are exported via Laos.
Piling up: Piles of canine skulls and bones can be seen in the forest in Tha Rae, as dog smugglers look to get rid of any incriminating evidence.
DEADLY JOURNEY
According to Chusak Pongpanich, Nakhon Phanom’s chief veterinary inspector, the dog trade in Thailand has existed for several decades.
Many villagers are animal lovers and have raised pet dogs. However, when offered cash or essential household items, some are willing to hand over animals which have caused them trouble, such as those which killed neighbours’ chickens and ducks.
After being sold, the dogs are transported in cramped metal cages, about 80cm wide, 45cm high and 1m long. Each cage is usually crammed with eight to 10 dogs, meaning the animals are unable to stand during the long journey ahead. The cages are then loaded on to large trucks — often more than 100 at a time — bound for the northeastern border.
According to Mr Chusak, the truck drivers wait until dark to move to avoid being detected by authorities. Once they reach the Mekong River, they unload their cargo on to long-tail boats which take it across to Laos.
Many dogs die along the way. But Mr Chusak noted that a gruesome fate also awaits those that survive the journey. Due to a belief that the release of adrenaline makes dog meat more tender, many of the animals are tortured before being slaughtered.
“The conditions in which these dogs are acquired, the way they are transported, the way they are often tortured or slaughtered is animal cruelty at its worst,” Mr Dalley said.
Market shock: Vendors selling dried dog meat remains a common sight in Tha Rae, despite the new Animal Welfare Law. Police are tolerating the stalls as they work to trace the supply chain to its source.
NO APPETITE FOR CHANGE
Dog consumption is outlawed by contagious disease control laws, which do not consider dogs and cats as livestock fit for consumption. “Very likely you can catch something you did not expect from eating dog meat,” Mr Dalley said.
However, the dog trade has long been big business in the Northeast, with some villagers depending on the supplementary income it brings in.
Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chalio said during the week that the Animal Welfare Law was enacted “some villagers came out to protest against the law at [Sakhon Nakhon] City Hall because they earn money from selling dog meat”. They argued that dog meat consumption has long been a local tradition.
Before the introduction of the new law, the penalties against dog meat traders were considered too soft to deter offenders, who might have simply been fined up to 10,000 baht for breaching the Contagious Diseases Act.
Now, those who violate the Animal Welfare Law are subject to a 40,000-baht fine and up to two years in prison.
The WDT source said the first time the new law was used came on Dec 29, just three days after it was enacted, when authorities raided the home of a man suspected of running the largest wholesale dog meat operation in Tueng district in the northern province of Chiang Rai.
The man was arrested, and his testimony led to the arrest of a second suspect in the nearby province of Payao. Both suspects are in custody awaiting trial.
Since the new law passed, the WDT has assisted in prosecuting 25 cases, while others remain under investigation, the source added.
House of horrors: A raid by authorities on this illegal slaughterhouse led to the arrest of a trader.
ON THE FRONT LINE
Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chalio said his assignment “is similar to narcotics suppression”. He and Pol Lt Lamai follow tips from informants and work mostly undercover to stake out suspected slaughterhouses and ensure suspects are caught red-handed.
The officers have to be certain that any confiscated meat came from dogs, and say looks alone can give a strong indication.
“Dog meat has a darker colour,” Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chalio said.
But even armed with solid evidence, the physical act of making arrests is not always easy. Some suspects have managed to escape by simply unleashing the smuggled dogs before they can be used as evidence.
Mr Chusak recalled a high-profile case in 2011 when officers moved in to arrest smugglers who were transporting about 2,400 dogs from Tha Rae to the Mekong River.
When the officers were about to pounce, the suspects destroyed the evidence by drowning more than 1,000 dogs and unleashing the rest on to the road, blocking officers’ entry. No arrests were made.
Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chalio said some informants proved unreliable. “Some give us old information. Once we arrived at a slaughterhouse suspected of being involved in the dog meat trade, but the owner said they had quit a long time ago.”
In a recent high-profile operation on Oct 17, Somboon Thongkup, widely known as Mr Lee, was targeted in a joint operation involving more than 20 people from the WDT, army, rangers and local municipality.
Acting on a tip-off that Mr Lee’s home was being used as a dog slaughterhouse and tannery, they kept the premises under surveillance until, at midnight, a truck moved in to unload hundreds of dogs. The officers moved in, and chaos erupted. The suspects tried to escape, but four of them, including Mr Lee and his wife, were arrested.
“Article 44 allows us to conduct raids at night time, which is not possible in normal circumstance,” Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chalio said.
Last month, Pol Lt Lamai, Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chalio and other officers arrested the owner of a house in Kalasin province who was found slaughtering dogs and packing them into iced containers ready to ship.
“We followed information supplied by our informants, who told us that dogs were being killed in that house,” said Pol Lt Lamai.
“When we arrived there, the suspect was cutting up dog carcasses, and was surrounded by ice containers ready for distribution.”
Dogs’ best friends: Pol Lt Lamai Sakhonpitak and Pol Sen Sgt Maj Chalio Chaihung are leading the fight against the dog trade in Isan, and liken their work to narcotics suppression.
Fighting back: John Dalley says it is difficult to stop the trade while it remains lucrative.
MARKET FORCES
In spite of the strict new penalties and increase in police operations, Spectrum found several vendors selling dried dog meat openly next to sets of scales in Tha Rae district.
Just as Spectrum was about to approach one vendor to ask for the price, three men emerged from behind the shop. They did not look friendly.
Pol Lt Lamai gestured from the back seat of the car waiting nearby, urging us to leave the scene.
He said later: “I did not want to arrest the small vendors because we want to trace the main supplier behind this dog meat trade.” n
Lucky break: A veterinarian plays with a dog rescued from the clutches of a meat trader.
Collecting evidence: ‘It is too risky for smugglers to carry dog bones,’ says Pol Snr Sgt Maj Chalio.