Sickening: Moment meat trader BUTCHERED two frightened dogs....then boiled them alive[Photos]

The bloody show of defiance took place beside a row of dog meat restaurants just two miles from the centre of the capital Hanoi as Mail Online investigated the country's brutal and lucrative trade in dogs for food.

More than 500,000 people have backed a campaign fronted by Ricky Gervais and Judi Dench to halt the trade in dogs in neighbouring Thailand which leads to pets being snatched off the streets to be slaughtered and served up in dog meat restaurants in Vietnam.

But the callous and stomach-turning reaction of the trader in Hanoi shows how ruthlessly determined dog meat traders are to carry on with their illicit and unregulated trade, whatever the outside world may think of them. #MORE pics below:

Parry (centre) and animal welfare campaigner Chinh (left) demand to know exactly where the dogs have come from, and confronts the trader who owns the shop to ask if the dogs are stolen

The dog-meat boss gets angry and pulls a yelping dog from the cage with metal tongs, beats it senseless and throws it to the floor for an employee to slit its throat

In a sickening show of defiance, an employee starts to skin the dog as the boss shouts: ' You are hurting our business'

Clearly still alive, kicking its legs and yelping, the dog is then thrown into a vat of boiling water

Moments later the pet is removed from the vat of boiling water and thrown into a revolving drum that strips off his fur

Behind the facade, a worker stirs a vat where the dog is thrown so its fur can be removed

On Vietnam's busy Linh Nam Road, the shop where traders openly slaughter dogs in the street