(Photo from Fjsen.com)

For many residents of China's southern town of Yulin, the peak of summer is the perfect time to get together with family and friends - and consume copious amounts of dog meat.

Thousands of dogs are expected to end up on the chopping block during the city's annual dog meat festival, which rises a lot of discussion and protests around China.

A lot of netizens have also issued their observations on China’s dog-eating tradition through People.cn and its social media accounts. As this topic has become increasingly controversial, we have selected some of our readers’ opinions. What’s your view on eating dogs? Do you think dogs are our friends or meat? Welcome to leaving your comments and voicing your views.

Supporters:

@ Rene Chang: Why can we not be more tolerant of others " strange" behaviours. I have heard that these are special dogs breed to be eaten. By the way they also eat snakes and sea-cucumber. All these hot-air are due to cultural differences.

@Liang5a: Dogs are no more or less sentient than other animals. Why should it be all right to slaughter cows but not dogs? I hope some day science can develop a fully nutritional substitute for meat. Or grow meat in vats instead on the hoof. Then we can eat all the meat we want without killing any sentient animals.

@Kelvin Ojukwu: Dogs tastes good! you can't say dogs your friend so some people can't eat it, pig is my friend and people eat it, cows, sheep, goat are all our friends, even fish is also our friend, but we eat them, let people that love dogs eat dog, besides they're not eating your pet, they've git theirs.

Yang Xiaoyun hugs a dog she has bought from a butcher. Photo: CuiMeng/GT

Opponents:

@ digi: Man's best friend should not be eaten or put on the menu. The excuse of tradition and all that bullocks is crap. As a Chinese person, it truly shameful to see people perform such acts. The government needs to step in and I've already emailed my discontent and displeasure.

@Engr Muhammad Abdurrehman: Dog meat is dangerous for health.

@Sonia Abbasi: you dont only kill the dogs to be eaten, you torture them, you burn them, you boil them alive and then finally they are killed and this all is done to make their meat tasty. This is just inhumane. 

Why not leave your comments below if you have more to say:)