It’s illegal to kill dogs and wildlife for meat in India—but a new PETA India video recorded in meat markets in northeast India reveals a bustling dog- and wildlife-meat trade. Puppies bark inside cages, while adult dogs with their mouths tied shut are confined to burlap sacks. After the dogs have been sold and killed, vendors remove their internal organs and char their bodies with a blowtorch.

Other live or dead animals at markets included eels, mice, frogs, deer, wild boar, and birds. Sellers butchered animals without gloves, and buyers routinely handled dead animals in the same way—conditions that risk disease transmission. COVID-19 is largely believed by experts to have stemmed or spread from a live-animal market, and SARS, swine flu, and bird flu have also been linked to the practice of confining and killing animals for food.

“Whether they sell dogs in Dimapur or birds in Brooklyn, filthy live-animal markets are hotbeds of suffering and petri dishes for pandemics,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is urging the World Health Organization to call for an end to these cruel and dangerous markets in the U.S. and abroad and is asking everyone disturbed by this footage to go vegan.”

PETA India has filed complaints and alerted local authorities to the markets.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.

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