youth economy
The pet funeral industry that "does not dare to speak out"
What would you do if you encountered a dead animal on the road?
The post-95 pet mortician Yang Dianqian gave the answer with action.
He often does public cremations, helping to dispose of the remains of pets who died in parks or on the roadside. "Take them as furry children raised by him, and every life deserves respect and kindness."
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In a village on the outskirts of Beijing, there is a humble pet funeral shop.
There is no sign on the gate, just to avoid trouble.
Liu Yue (pseudonym), the person in charge of the store, took out all kinds of documents and explained to the reporters of China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily: "The villagers feel bad and often report it and want us to move out, but my house is indeed a regular business. There was no problem checking."
A data shows that in 2020 alone, the number of dogs and cats in cities and towns in my country has exceeded 100 million, and more than 1 million pet corpses need to be disposed of every year.
According to data from Tianyancha, in the past two years, the number of new pet funeral-related companies in my country has exceeded 230 every month.
In the future, these figures may also rise.
Site selection is a problem that pet funeral shops will encounter
"Location selection is a problem that every pet funeral shop will encounter when it starts." In 2015, Li Chao opened a funeral home called "Chongmu" near the Fifth Ring Road in Beijing, and later moved to Fengtai for some reasons. District, "I ran a lot of places and couldn't find it. Fortunately, there were customers who helped." Junguang also mentioned that he once opened his pet funeral home, "Rainbow Planet" in an industrial park, and the crying in the farewell room affected the neighbor next door. The company's employees and customers, as a result, have been complaining all the time, and they closed down and relocated after one year of working. "There should be a quiet and soundproof independent space, and the door should be open to allow parking, so that the owner does not have to carry the pet too far."
After moving to a new location, in order to reduce trouble, the pet funeral shop still "dare not to speak out", and the development of customer sources has become a new problem.
Although some store information can be found on platforms such as Meituan, Dianping, and 58.com, the store owner feels that the platform is more of an evaluation and feedback function, and it is not ideal in terms of attracting traffic.
Several practitioners interviewed believed that word of mouth is still the mainstream at present. "You can't recommend a funeral parlor to friends who are preparing or raising pets. It's like a 'curse'. You can only wait for the society to gradually improve and let pets Funerals developed into a habit."
"Death is unpredictable, so we don't have low and high seasons, and consumption scenarios are also low-frequency." Li Chao said that every time he saw the words "annual income of one million", "zero cost, zero threshold" in the report, he would He thought it was "ridiculous", "Our clerk's monthly income is actually the same as that of ordinary office workers." In the past 6 years, he has seen many pet funeral homes with dreams of becoming rich close down.
Under the many difficulties, the reason why his "admiration" can survive, Li Chao attributed it to love, persistence, and ability to endure hardship. "At least two to three years before you can see the benefits."
"My shop hit the new crown pneumonia epidemic when it first opened, and then it got on the right track, and it has not achieved profitability yet." Jun Guang emphasized that pet morticians are not lucrative professions, but more like psychological counselors. "The threshold is low but requires a total of High affection, only the same love can empathize with customers.” Wang Jiacheng, the manager of Fengtai Store, also agreed with this point of view. He suggested that young people who want to enter the industry should think carefully, “There are many applicants, but what remains are true love. Animal people, because we're dealing with bloodstained or old, smelly pet corpses."
Pet burial is not "garbage incineration"
Talking about the reason for resigning to become a pet mortician, Li Chao said that after the death of his dog, he inspected several funeral companies, and the conditions were very poor.
In the end, there was really no other way. When sending it to the funeral home, the staff directly disposed of it without cleaning it up. "It's like burning a piece of garbage, which makes me feel very uncomfortable." Therefore, "favorite" came into being, and it is also the current The business model of the vast majority of businesses in the market is, "In addition to cats and dogs, we also provide services to owners of all pets such as goldfish, lizards, and sheep."
From the process, the owner should transport the pet to the pet funeral company within 3 hours after it dies, because more than 6 hours, bacteria, viruses, etc. may appear on the corpse, endangering human health.
Afterwards, the pet mortician will clean up and decorate the pet's remains, leave footprints, hair, etc. for the pet as a souvenir. After the farewell ceremony in the farewell room, the pet will be transported for cremation.
In order to reassure the owner, the merchant will record a video or broadcast live during the cremation process.
After the ashes are collected in environmentally friendly cloth bags or urns, the owner can choose to store them or take them away.
After visiting and searching online, the reporter found that pet funeral shops will set prices according to the size of pets.
The price of cremation of a pet cat or dog is divided into 3 types: 800 yuan, 1200 yuan and 1500 yuan.
Of course, more merchants will choose the method of weighing. In Beijing, Shanghai and other places, the service fee for pets within 10 catties is 500-800 yuan, and the price of more than 10 catties is calculated individually.
In addition, some businesses or pet hospitals also provide centralized cremation services, and the fee is generally 200 to 400 yuan, which is about half of the one-to-one price.
In addition to basic funeral services, merchants generally provide value-added services such as souvenirs, which can cost up to several hundred thousand yuan.
For example, 3D cloned puppets, paw print silver medals, pet ashes pendants, hand-painted pet urns, etc., and the price of diamonds made from pet ashes can even surpass natural diamonds, with a price of more than 140,000 yuan per carat.
Whether it is pet specimens or euthanasia, pet morticians often encounter many problems in their work, because there are still gaps in laws and regulations in this area, and practitioners need self-discipline in many places.
Li Chao told reporters that euthanasia in "Chongmu" has to go through very strict steps. After careful inquiries online, the owner needs to bring the pet to the store for observation, and then it will be finally implemented after the pet doctor's assessment. Doing good deeds and forming a good relationship." Still photographer Zhang Wenchao became friends with Junguang because of this, "I am very grateful to him for allowing my cat to walk with dignity."
Looking forward to the "healthy growth" of the industry
At present, all pet funeral homes are trained by themselves after recruiting talents.
According to Junguang, it takes at least 3 months to train a zero-based pet mortician, including language business, cleaning technology training, etc.
Li Chao emphasized that for the industry, practical experience is very important, and new employees in the store have to train for about half a year, which is also responsible for customers.
However, only relying on the personal ethics of businesses, the industry can not "grow healthily".
Because there is no professional education for the industry in China, and there is no corresponding qualification certificate acquisition and training, compared with the mortuary, the professional level and quality of pet morticians are uneven.
The "White Paper on China's Pet Consumption Trends in 2021" released by iResearch shows that my country's pet industry has entered a stable and mature period of orderly growth, but the pet funeral industry is called "a gray industry that is growing wildly" by practitioners.
After inquiring through the Tianyancha App, the reporter found that the business scope of many pet funeral companies is "selling animal funeral supplies", and some even "selling daily necessities", "technical promotion services" and "pet supplies sales".
Some practitioners told reporters that there are currently no clear regulations related to pet funerals, so they often operate "without evidence".
Liu Yue told reporters that pet funeral services involve market supervision, civil affairs, agriculture, forestry, environmental protection and many other departments, and the supervision is still blank. I just don’t know what I’m missing, what departments to go to and what procedures to go through.”
Pet cemeteries have also sparked a lot of controversy.
The reporter learned by consulting Qian Zhou, a lawyer at Beijing Tianda Gonghe Law Firm, that according to the Land Management Law, graves are not allowed to occupy cultivated land for construction. Even forest land and wasteland involve the change of land use and must go through approval procedures, while pet cemeteries are not allowed. It is a legislative gap, so pet cemetery businesses should not have relevant qualifications.
With the recent hot searches on topics such as "Ouyang Nana's experience of the pet mortician career", many practitioners, including Junguang, have been encouraged. Junguang believes that the pet funeral industry has a bright future, and believes that with the development of my country's laws Continuous improvement, coupled with the continuous increase of followers and high-quality practitioners, the standardization process of the industry will be faster and faster.
It is far from enough to rely on pet morticians as "ferrymen"
What would you do if you encountered a dead animal on the road?
The post-95 pet mortician Yang Dianqian gave the answer with action.
He often does public cremations, helping to dispose of the remains of pets who died in parks or on the roadside. "Take them as furry children raised by him, and every life deserves respect and kindness."
The same is true for Li Chao. In the past three years, the store has cremated the remains of more than 6,000 pets, including stray cats and dogs. He also cooperated with the Fund to organize the "Malu Angel" program in Beijing, providing 1,000 volunteers with the necessary tools for free. It collects the remains of stray animals and provides more than 1,000 public cremation services.
However, it is far from enough to rely on pet morticians as "ferrymen".
Wang Jiacheng said that every year there are customers who come from Xinjiang, Yunnan and other places to send their pets on the last trip. "My dog could only be buried under a tree after his death at that time, which is a pity of mine." There are no pet funeral parlors in the cities of China, and friends who cherish pets around them may take them to big cities, but most people do not waste time and money, and can only throw them into the garbage heap or river, and dispose of them hastily.
Some experts reminded that allowing pet remains to flow to the society may cause epidemics to spread. Animals that die normally can be cremated or buried deep. Choose a place with few residents and far away from water sources to dig a deep pit of about two meters and cover the remains. A thicker layer of quicklime prevents the spread of disease-causing substances.
In addition, you can also choose a more civilized and environmentally friendly online pet monument and other methods to replace the cemetery.
The Animal Epidemic Prevention Law stipulates that after the death of animals, they should be harmlessly disposed of in accordance with regulations, and no unit or individual may dispose of them at will.
However, the reality is the opposite. According to media reports, the Beijing Kennel Association has visited the municipal and sanitation departments to investigate, and learned that, especially in summer, sanitation workers often pick up cat and dog corpses wrapped in plastic bags from trash cans. Not to mention the "behind the scenes" of a large number of stray cats and dogs.
The emergence of stray animals is ultimately caused by human abandonment. How can legal means be used to punish those who litter pet remains and abandon cats and dogs?
Qian Zhou said that the existing laws do not fully protect the basic rights of animals. "Although some people's actions have harmed the interests of animals, they can only be condemned from a moral level."
In this regard, many interviewees, including pet morticians, appealed, hoping that people will actively "vote" for the animal protection law, and help the country improve relevant laws and regulations on animal protection and body disposal as soon as possible.
Wei Wan, a trainee reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily. Source: China Youth Daily