From: Grant Callaghan (grantc4@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon 09 Dec 2002 - 15:52:38 GMT
Wednesday, December 4, 2002
Guangdong gourmets eat 10,000 cats a day
Animal-lovers are upset as felines become flavour of the moment
JOSEPHINE MA
The huge demand for cat meat in Guangdong has fuelled a debate over the
practice of eating pets.
A controversial article in the Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News has
claimed that 10,000 cats are eaten in the province every day. Older cats are
said to taste the best and are believed to keep those who eat them warm in
the winter.
Intrigued by the amount of complaint letters after a cat-meat restaurant
advertised in the newspaper, reporters interviewed restaurant owners and
meat suppliers in Guangdong. Their discoveries appalled cat lovers.
Although cat-meat restaurants are now rare since the trend among the nouveau
riche a few years ago for eating exotic food has subsided, small food stalls
and hot-pot restaurants still serve cat meat as a delicacy.
One employee at a meat market told the newspaper that people had turned from
eating game to eating cats as a cost-cutting measure. A cat stall in the
game-meat market can easily sell 500kg of cat meat a day in winter.
"We made a rough estimate. There are about 80 stalls selling cats in the
three [game meat] markets. If each sell about 300 to 400kg of cat meat, then
the conservative estimate is that they sell about 10,000 cats a day," the
paper said.
The report said almost all the cats sold to restaurants were domestic
animals, and many of them had been stolen or caught on the streets.
Because of the large demand in Guangdong, cats are being imported from other
provinces such as Jiangsu, Anhui, Jiangxi and Hunan.
An employee of a cat stall said some people now earned a living by catching
stray cats on the streets and selling them for five yuan (HK$4.70) each.
Cat lovers in Shenzhen have launched a campaign to stop the inhumane
treatment of the animals.
Some newspapers in Guangdong have printed interviews with doctors who have
warned the public to stop eating cats as they carry the deadly feline
spongiform encephalopathy disease, the cat-borne variety of mad-cow disease,
as well as parasites.
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