The Tomohon Extreme Market was once a top tourist attraction within the Indonesian province of North Sulawesi — a live animal market crammed with the whole lot from fileted pythons to skewered bats and rats.
However the market drew international condemnation in 2018 after animal activists shot videos of dogs and cats being brutally beaten and blowtorched alive.
Activists urged major travel firms to stop recommending the market as a tourism site, said Lola Webber, Humane Society International’s director of campaigns.
Firms like Tripadvisor swiftly complied, she said.
But banning the dog and cat meat trade — a part of a long-held tradition among the many local Minahasa people — was significantly harder, she said.
“We were told by many for a few years, you will never change North Sulawesi, you will never change Tomohon. it’s unattainable,” Webber said.
They were incorrect.
A ‘huge win’
In July, Tomohon’s mayor, Caroll Senduk, signed a law banning dog and cat meat trading on the market, and the market’s meat traders signed an agreement to permanently stop selling, slaughtering and trafficking dogs and cats, based on Humane Society International.
This was a “huge win” for activists, said Webber, who’ve been working together under the name Dog Meat Free Indonesia since 2017 to alter the “immense cruelty and suffering” on display on the market.
After the ban went into effect, 25 dogs and three cats were rescued. They were taken to a sanctuary run by Animal Friends Manado Indonesia for quarantine, after which they’ll hopefully be placed of their “without end homes, either inside Indonesia or internationally,” said Humane Society International’s Lola Webber
Source: Humane Society International
“It’s an infinite victory for animal protection and literally the hundreds and hundreds of dogs and cats which might be spared from Tomohon market every month,” she said.
The traders got a “small grant” to stop participating within the trade, she told CNBC Travel, while the coalition of activists lobbied the federal government concerning the disease risks of live animal markets, which ranges from viruses like Covid-19 to rabies.
Rabies is endemic in much of Indonesia, including the island of Sulawesi, based on the World Health Organization.
Next steps
The ban of dog and cat meat within the Tomohon market is a step in the fitting direction, but problems with the trade don’t end there, said Michael Patching, chairperson of Impetus Animal Welfare.
One issue is an influx of stray animals, he said. “Bali handled this issue by poisoning stray dogs, which ended up being just as bad, if not worse, than those which were subjected to the dog meat trade.”
A live dog can cost as much as $40, and one which has already been killed is priced from $2.30 to $4 per kilogram, said Frank Delano Manus of Animal Friends Manado Indonesia.
Source: Humane Society International
To combat this, the Dog Meat Free Indonesia coalition is supporting programs to spay, neuter and vaccinate dogs and cats in Indonesia, said Webber.
She said she hopes to make use of the Tomohon market ban as a precedent to work with government, market management, meat traders and the general public in other provinces where dog meat is eaten too.
Polling suggests only 5% of Indonesia’s population has ever tried it, said Webber. Yet there are hot spots where it’s eaten, like Java’s Surakarta (or Solo) and North Sulawesi, the latter being a predominantly Christian enclave in a Muslim-majority nation. (Like pigs, dogs are viewed as being unclean, and due to this fact not suitable for consumption, within the Muslim faith.)
In those areas, activists raise public awareness of the cruelty of the trade and the trafficking that goes together with it, which frequently involves the theft of family pets.
“We have interviewed so many individuals who’ve had their dogs and cats stolen,” Webber said.
Poor governance
Many activists who spoke to CNBC Travel said poor governance is the most important hurdle to ending the dog and cat meat trade.
Frank Delano Manus, an animal rights advocate at Animal Friends Manado Indonesia, said 95% of North Sulawesi’s exotic animal meat is shipped from neighboring provinces — without government checks or quarantine regulations.
A timeline of Indonesia’s dog meat trade
- 2017: Bali cracks down on dog meat vendors
- 2019: The regency of Karanganyar in central Java bans the dog trade
- 2022: The town of Medan and the capital city of Jakarta ban dog meat
- Today: Bans exist in 22 cities and regencies
Indonesian officials didn’t immediately reply to CNBC’s request for comment.
When his organization tried to ban the sale of snake and bat meat when the pandemic hit in 2020, it received a “flat response” from the federal government, he said.
“When people ask me what is the primary problem in Indonesia, I at all times say it’s the dearth of law enforcement,” Manus told CNBC.
Indonesia has an enormous pet-loving community, said Webber, which incorporates the dog meat traders. “Every trader has a pet, a minimum of one pet dog.”
Source: Humane Society International
The sale of dog meat is illegitimate other parts of Asia, including Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong and Taiwan. However the industry lives on in places like China and South Korea — and Vietnam.
“While all the main focus has been on South Korea, Indonesia and other countries, Vietnam’s dog and cat meat trade has continued to thrive,” said Rahul Sehgal, director of international advocacy on the Soi Dog Foundation, adding that “tens of millions of signatures” on online petitions haven’t made a difference.
Rescued animals being transported by members of the Humane Society International to a care and rehabilitation center on July 21, 2023, in North Sulawesi, Indonesia.
Source: Humane Society International
“In Vietnam, every third shop is a pet grooming salon, every fifth shop is a pet supply store, but every twentieth shop is a slaughterhouse or a restaurant that’s selling dog or cat meat,” he told CNBC, adding that it’s eaten for cultural, superstitious and medicinal purposes.
“Identical to how the Chinese use rhino horns or tiger bones for traditional medicine, cat bones are said to cure a number of illnesses like asthma,” he said. “But there isn’t any scientific basis to this.”
A gap for more travelers
Though Tomohon Extreme Market was once marketed as a tourist attraction — and in some places, it still is — the dog and cat meat ban may herald more travelers to North Sulawesi.
In a Tripadvisor post on March 5, a user discusses reading about Sulawesi’s dog meat trade.
The post states: “Well the subsequent trip was going to be to Sulawesi, Indonesia … I do not care what you eat, but torture shouldn’t be an element of it. Subsequently I cannot in good conscience travel there.”
A screenshot of a post on Tripadvisor in a forum discussing Sulawesi.
Screen shot from Tripadvisor
Negative media attention frustrated the dog meat traders, Webber said.
“People would see it, and feel very strongly about it,” she said. “International tourists, national tourists, and locals themselves didn’t need to see that degree of brutality.”
