The increasing willingness of pet owners in mainland China to spend thousands of yuan arranging dignified farewells has led to a surge in demand for pet funerals, but behind these promises of a 'good death' may lie fraud. Recent media investigations have revealed that many funeral businesses exploit marketing strategies like 'one pet, one furnace' (one pet per furnace) and offering full video witnessing to attract customers, in reality mixing multiple pet remains and even using artificial intelligence to create fake funeral videos, deceiving pet owners. Even more shockingly, these cremation services are often conducted in unlicensed, modified vans, showing complete disregard for the dignity of the animals.
Industry Dysfunction: 'One Pet, One Furnace'沦成Hoax
The story of Shanghai pet owner Lu Ming exemplifies the chaos in the industry. Her beloved cat Meng Meng passed away from polycystic kidney disease. A funeral merchant claimed to offer a 'one pet, one furnace' service for 599 yuan and guaranteed a complete video recording of the process. To ensure peace of mind, Lu Ming paid an additional 200 yuan and insisted on being present to witness the cremation. Following the merchant's instructions, she ended up at an abandoned area under an overpass, where she found a cremation furnace installed inside a white modified van. When she opened the furnace door, the scene that greeted her was daunting: a furnace chamber approximately 1.5 meters long and 1 meter wide, packed with thick ash.
Lu Ming noticed immediately, realizing the ashes contained明显 fragments from multiple animals, not just a single pet. 'How could this be bone ash from just one small cat?' she lamented to 'Cover News', 'If I hadn't insisted on accompanying him, would my little cat also have become one of the heaps of bone ash?' Exposure of such scams is not isolated incidents. Last month, a shop in Guangzhou was found using AI to generate fake images of the funeral process. When the pet owner discovered the ruse, the shop merely returned the cat's remains, which were uncleaned and placed in a cardboard box. Another owner accidentally knocked over their beloved pet's ashes urn and found that the contents were not the expected grey bone ash, but crumbs similar to biscuits.
Background: Regulatory Gap and Compliance Challenges
Under mainland China's animal epidemic prevention laws, dead or unidentifiable animal bodies must undergo harmless disposal. However, in practice, compliant institutions are severely lacking. Mr. Xu Yanan, general manager of Chengdu Evergreen Harmless Disposal Co., Ltd., pointed out that although only four companies in Chengdu possess licenses for harmless disposal of sick or dead livestock and poultry, only three of them also provide pet cremation services. Nationally, less than 10% of institutions are recognized by regulatory authorities as compliant. This means that up to 90% of the market participants are unlicensed black workshops or mobile cremation vans, which typically lease rural houses or purchase modified vehicles to operate.
Industry insiders reveal that some intermediaries collaborate with non-compliant 'private furnaces' primarily because these latter operators avoid the costs associated with compliant operations, such as investments in epidemic prevention and environmental protection equipment, as well as social insurance for employees. This low-cost model enables black workshops to offer services at highly attractive prices, further squeezing the survival space for legitimate businesses. Shanghai pet funeral shop owner Wang Tao, who has been in the industry for six years, acknowledges the extremely low barrier to entry. 'Anyone can do it, good or bad, it all depends on conscience,' he claims. He gives an example stating that the cost of electricity for cremating a small dog weighing ten jin is about five yuan (RMB), and fuel costs are merely a few tens of yuan, yet industry fees typically range from hundreds to thousands of yuan, attracting numerous merchants to flood the market.
Facing fierce competition, Wang Tao can only continuously lower the price of his packages and hopes that the industry can establish standards and raise the entry barrier as soon as possible to eradicate unethical practices like mixing remains and creating fake videos with AI. However, within the current legal and regulatory framework, the standardization of the pet funeral industry as a new field still faces numerous challenges.