Animal activists transport a cage containing dogs from a slaughter house in Tomohon, North Sulawesi.
The previously uncompromising bazaar is the first such market in the country to finally back down and stop the trade of cat and dog meat, animal rights group Humane Society International said in a statement Friday. The market’s six remaining dog and cat meat traders signed an agreement to stop the sale, and the mayor of Tomohon city signed into law a ban on future trade at the market, the group said in a statement.
Those calls ramped up after the first cluster of the coronavirus outbreak in 2020 was linked to a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan, stoking fears elsewhere that viruses were jumping from animals to humans.