To millions around the world, these dogs are friends and companions -- never to be abused or eaten.

Yulin needs to go much further by canceling this cruel "festival" outright.

Every year an estimated 10 million dogs are consumed for meat in China, according to a 2014 commercial report on the dog meat industry published by ASKCI.

In the West, reaction is divided between those who vigorously condemn the festival and those who claim that it is a kind of cultural imperialism to judge China by our own values.

But they are simply hypocritical when they come from carnivores who happily eat intensively reared pigs, or even from vegetarians whose milk and cheese comes from cattle kept in such poor conditions that large swathes of the herds are lame.

Seeing one video of one dog being beaten is not enough to condemn the whole festival, just as knowing that there have been abuses in some Western abattoirs does not condemn the whole meat industry.

Ultimately this is an issue for the Chinese to resolve themselves.

The festival, while organized by private citizens and businesses, is not officially endorsed by the Chinese government, at either the local or national level. Local support is mixed, with some enthusiastically welcoming visitors from out of town and others complaining that it gives their area a bad name.

The trade involves animal cruelty, criminal activity including theft of pets, and serious risk to human health, with the World Health Organization linking the trade to cholera and rabies.

The festival organizers dispute those claims, arguing that the dogs are killed humanely. In response to criticism, they have also said the dogs won't be killed in public any more.

The Yulin dog-meat festival is condemned internationally and by many people in China itself these days because, for most of us, the idea of killing, cooking and eating dogs – animals we know and love – is revolting..

Of course, there's no rational reason why the idea of dismembering and devouring any animal shouldn't elicit the same revulsion – especially when animals killed for the table in Britain face horrors just like those the dogs in Yulin experience.

Dogs killed and eaten in Yulin are regularly transported there from other cities. They are loaded into small cages and put on lorries, which may then travel for hundreds of miles to Yulin. The animals are often deprived of food, water and rest along the way. The same is true for millions of sensitive sheep, cows and other animals in the EU. Countries such as Ireland and France regularly export live animals to places as far away as Jordan and Libya. These living beings are loaded onto ships and lorries for hellish journeys often of thousands – not hundreds – of miles, only to meet their violent end.

Whether a fish or a dog, a chicken or a sheep, no animal wants to suffer and die for our palate. Pointing a finger at other cultures is easy – what's harder is facing the faults in our own behaviour and correcting them. Yes, let's be outraged by the cruelty that takes place during the Yulin Dog Meat Festival, but let's not be hypocrites about it. We should extend our compassion to all animals, not just dogs, by leaving them off our plates.