posted May 18, 2017 10:18 AM            

Li and Higgins deem it unlikely that traders will try circumventing the ban by giving away free dog meat. “Restaurants have been told to remove the dishes, and as Yulin has always been about commerce rather than culture, I think it's unlikely that traders and restaurant owners would go to the trouble of putting themselves out of pocket,” Higgins says in an email.

The groups haven’t yet seen any written documentation from Yulin’s government confirming the ban. But in a phone interview, Li says that a lack of a paper trail wouldn’t come as a surprise.

In 2014, the Yulin government issued a confidential internal order that forbade Yulin officials from visiting dog-meat restaurants during the festival, in a governmental effort to keep its distance. Within hours, animal-rights advocates including Li had been leaked the memo.

“The government was reportedly furious, but they couldn’t figure out who leaked it,” says Li, who says that the new order was likely spread verbally. “The local officials we talked to in 2015 said that they stopped issuing written documents.”

At press, National Geographic has not been able to independently confirm the reports.