Fact-check: Photos peddle false claims about dog meat being seized in KP

Claims that dog meat has been seized from restaurants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are baseless, say officials

Updated Friday Oct 20 2023

Pakistani social media users have repeatedly shared claims that police have raided several restaurants in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province for serving dog meat to customers.

The claim is false.

Claim

Photographs shared widely on Facebook purportedly show officials seizing dog meat from eateries in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“The police in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have raided several restaurants,” wrote one Facebook user on September 15, “Various types of meat, raw and cooked, were found at these places.”

The Facebook user goes on to allege that the hotel owner admitted to serving this meat for the last five years.

The post had received over 6,600 shares and 256 likes, at the time of writing.

A similar post was shared by another user on Facebook, which was also shared over 1,000 times.

Fact

The claim that dog meat has been seized from several restaurants in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is baseless, say officials.

Khan Ghalib, the additional director of communication at the food department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, called the allegations “fake news”.

“People make these pictures viral every year,” he told Geo Fact Check over the phone, “This is totally fake. There is no truth in it.”

Ghalib further added that the eateries are inspected by the food department, not the police.

Separately, Muhammad Imran Khan, the director general of information and public relations at the directorate general information office in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, also rubbished the claims.

“The pictures have been circulating for the last two years,” he said, over the phone, adding that he double-checked with the food department and they have not seized any dog meat.

Khan further added that a few years back social media alleged that the pictures were from restaurants in Hyderabad, Sindh.

Geo Fact Check then reached out to Ghulam Rasool Shah, the director operations at the Sindh Food Authority in Hyderabad, who said that he too had heard such claims about a local shop three years back, but the food authority did not find any dog meat at the restaurant when it inspected it back then.

Meanwhile, using reverse image search engines Geo Fact Check found that the pictures being circulated, alongside false claims, were also shared online back in 2018. However, Geo Fact Check could not establish where or when the pictures were taken.

With additional reporting by Muhammad Binyameen Iqbal.