I visited a dog meat market - the horror keeps me awake at night
Monday 8 April 2019 08:38, UK
Peter Egan is a British actor and an avid animal rights activist and campaigner.
Recently, he was taken on a trip to an Extreme Market in Indonesia where he witnessed scenes he says wake him up in the middle of the night.
He tells Sky News about how his lifestyle and view on animals has changed, and the journey he says has blistered his soul.
:: The following content may be upsetting to some readers
Most nights I wake at about 3am - one horrible image after another which unhinges the shutter.
It could be the inane grin on the face of a trophy hunter standing by the corpse of a magnificent animal that they've just blasted out of this world.
Their faces disturb me deeply.
The cowardly smirk and the look of achievement dribbling over their dreary faces, men and women alike, gloating over the murder of innocence, bleating conservation when in fact it's sheer bloody murder.
We, the "human animal", slaughter billions of animals yearly to satisfy our appetite for the flesh of that which is not our own.
For food, for fun or for clothing.
Our desire for the flesh of the innocent seems to be insatiable.
We are also great at creating smokescreens to justify our cruelty.
It's usually culture, tradition or necessity.
We slaughter in excess of 50 billion farm animals yearly so that 6 billion carnivores can eat them.
We slaughter endangered species in the disgusting world of trophy hunting under the guise of conservation.
We slaughter in excess of 50 billion farm animals yearly so that 6 billion carnivores can eat them.
We watch as foxes are ripped apart or bulls tortured to death under the guise of culture and tradition.
We humans are very strange.
We are waging war on every species on the planet and we do it with the indifferent belief that it is our right.
We accept that elephants, the most stoic and gentle creatures, can have their spirits literally broken by brutal beatings in the horrible business of Phajaan - the traditional Asian practice of breaking a young elephant's spirit so they are submissive to humans.
Why?
So that tourists can ride on their backs or visit them in temples where they stand for hours on the concrete floors where tourists believe they will get their blessings from a broken and suffering giant.
The list is endless.
We experiment yearly on multi-millions of animals.
We are destroying both the stock and environment of marine and ocean animals.
In pursuing this attrition, this war we are waging on every species on the planet, we are also, through our greed and carelessness, destroying the biodiversity of the planet, the planet we depend on for life.
We are colluding with our own destruction.
Having reached the grand age of 72, life has never had more meaning for me - possibly because I know that there's more of it behind me than there is in front.
That's as it should be.
I decided 10 years ago to change my life and deal with that which horrifies me: cruelty in all its forms.
I vowed to lead a more compassionate life which meant addressing everything that impacted on my life in this respect.
I became a vegetarian first and then made the choice that now defines me completely as a human being, I became a vegan.
My wife Myra and I had been rescuing dogs for about 10 years when I made this decision.
Having a personal and creative engagement with animals both informed and gave direction to this journey.
We are waging war on every species on the planet and we do it with the indifferent belief that it is our right
I became an ambassador or a patron for many charities. Too many to name but I will name a few.
Jill Robinson asked me to be UK ambassador for Animals Asia, a magnificent charity which rescues moon bears from the horror of bile farming in China and Vietnam.
I also, after meeting Lola Webber, one of the founders of Change For Animals Foundation, agreed to become their ambassador too.
This is what introduced me to the horrors of the dog meat trade in South East Asia.
It is the subject which invades my sleep at this moment in time.
Lola, on behalf of the Dog Meat Free Indonesia campaign, invited me to make a lightning visit to Indonesia to see first hand the Extreme Markets in Tomohon and Langowan in NW Sulawesi.
We were tasked to bear witness to the abject cruelty imposed on animals in these markets but most specifically to dogs, who suffer unbelievable horrors at the hands of the dog meat traders, their butchers and the public who support this trade.
I travelled with my good friend Andrew Telling, the founder and chief executive of Orange Planet Pictures.
We arrived at the market in Tomohon early on Saturday morning, 2 March.
It was hot and sweaty.
Tropical fruits were expressing their pungent smells mixed with human sweat, diesel fumes and nicotine.
Tropical flowers introduced themselves as we walked into the heaving market.
All kinds of pleasant smells incidentally colluded to put us at our ease.
"It smells great," I said to Lola as we proceeded deeper into the market.
She didn't reply but had a look on her face.
It wasn't long before I clearly understood the meaning of that look.
First it was the unexpected impulse to vomit as the mix of dead flesh, intestines and blood stormed into my nostrils and down my throat.
The atmosphere had changed radically from tropical light to darkness and horror... we were in the Extreme Market.
I was totally unprepared for the butchers' knives, the choppers and machetes crunching their way through bone and tissue.
Guts on the floor, cigarettes dangling from the mouths of all the traders, puffing smoke as they dismembered the corpses with filthy hands and expert indifference.
Bats, rats, snakes, pigs, chickens and of course cats and dogs.
The market traders had been warned of our visit and had agreed to no public slaughter of dogs while we were there.
A government official said that no dogs were in the market and no slaughter would take place today.
It wasn't long before we discovered five dogs hidden in a cage under a tarpaulin.
Vegetables had been placed on the tarpaulin in order to disguise what was beneath.
The dogs were sick and traumatised.
They showed no desire or wish for human contact as we lifted the tarpaulin from the cage.
It was hot and airless under the cover and the dogs lay on the wire floor - too sick or terrified to move.
I have never seen dogs in a worse condition in my life.
These dogs were waiting for a brutal death - a death they knew was inevitable.
Lola tried in vain to intervene on behalf of these poor dogs but it fell on deaf ears.
We refused to leave the cage and eventually the poor creatures were wheeled away into a restricted area where we could not follow.
The look on Lola's face told me again all I needed to know.
I wondered how she had the stamina and courage to deal so frequently with this horror.
Her commitment amazes me.
I was relieved to leave Tomohon and glad that we had not witnessed the death of these poor creatures.
I didn't need to see them beaten then blow-torched in order to bear witness.
I needed what we all wanted - to save them and we couldn't.
We drove an hour to another extreme market in Langowan.
By the time we got there it was past midday and most of the slaughter had taken place or was paused when they realised we were filming.
I felt very sorry for Andrew.
He saw everything through the lens and didn't have the opportunity to look away.
He was our eyes and I know how deeply it affected his soul.
Again the smell was horrendous, again I felt like vomiting, again the area was strewn with body parts, intestines and blood.
Two char-coaled cats lay on a butchers' slab side by side, their eyes were screaming still.
The market traders were eviscerating two dogs who'd recently been blow-torched.
Their intestines were pulled out and spewed to the floor as we walked by.
Lola held back.
She'd seen this all before and worse.
I looked for a moment at the charred remains, the corpses of those we describe as our best friends.
I felt an urge to scream at the butchers and those who looked on at this as food.
There were 10 dogs in four cages waiting their turn.
They had witnessed the horror of what awaited them.
Some had splashes of blood on their faces.
They didn't look from side to side, they stared, locked into the middle distance.
Not wanting to be noticed. Not wanting to be contacted. Not wanting to be slaughtered.
As much as the horror that awaited them, the thing that broke my heart was that these magical creatures, dogs, our companions of choice, I felt I had betrayed their very existence.
I could do nothing to comfort or give them hope.
I thought of the massive contradiction between what happens when families view dogs in shelters: dogs come to the front of the cage eagerly, hoping for a friend to take them home.
Here we have families viewing these poor creatures in the cages, giggling and pointing to the one they are selecting, not as a companion but as a meal.
They then watch happily while the dog is bludgeoned and blow-torched while still twitching and dismembered.
This isn't a judgement I am making, it is an expression of bewilderment which blisters my soul.
I will never forget the look on Lola's face as she changed colour when deciding which of the four dogs we could rescue from the 10.
We couldn't take them all as much as we wanted to.
I'll never forget Andrew's drawn and exhausted expression after hours looking through a lens at images which will haunt him forever.
I have seen dogs in the beleaguered war zone of Kabul, Afghanistan, on the dog meat farms in South Korea, in China, in the appalling Amish puppy farms in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.
On the streets and in the kill shelters of Bosnia and Romania.
All those images are all etched deeply on my soul, but I will never forget the faces of the dogs we had to leave behind in Langowan Market.
Those are the faces I see at 3am most mornings.
They are at peace now, but I will never be, until the cruelty ends.