There is a booming business in cat meat in Vietnam resulting in pet cats being taken from the streets in their tens of thousands across Asia.
Some of these cats will be community cats and some will be domestic cats. These people are therefore often stealing and brutally killing someone else’s cat. It is like harvesting free livestock that happens to be on your doorstep. It is quite revolting to people in the West but we have to respect other people’s culture don’t we?
The people who roundup these cats and steal them charge restaurants £37-£52 for each cat. That is the value of a domestic cat in Vietnam, which, ironically is probably higher than the value of a random bred, domestic cat in the West. That is the power of commerce because when people eat cats they have a value above the value when they only look after them.
The cooked cats are served up as “baby tiger with noodles”. Restaurants are springing up across northern Vietnam despite laws against eating domestic cats.
The owner of a restaurant, one hour from the capital of Vietnam, Hanoi, told the Daily Mail that demand was so high he had slaughtered 31 cats that day and the day wasn’t over by the sound of it.
The law against eating domestic cat is not enforced because it is a very popular dish with police officers, lawyers and officials.
There are animal welfare groups in Vietnam who obviously hate this trade. They say that the animals are transported in appalling conditions over large distances to service the restaurants. They say the cats are skinned alive.
Eating cats is so popular in Vietnam that truck loads are imported from neighbouring Laos and China.
In January 2015, a lorry containing 3 tons of cats was seized by the police on its way to Hanoi. Some of the animals had died in the heat and the rest were crushed to death after they had been rescued because it was believed that they might spread disease. It is a true horror story. The truck driver was fined £250 for smuggling them in.
In one restaurant, the most popular dish is “cat meat hot pot”. It is priced at about £40. It feeds 7 people. This is a very pricey meal in Vietnam, which indicates how popular it is and how much it is considered to be a delicacy.
This restaurant owner keeps hundreds of cats in cages crammed together. They are terrified and they struggle to get out. I won’t describe how they are killed because it is too brutal. The restaurant owner says:
“Everybody wants to eat cat now. It is more delicious and exotic than other kinds of meat. I’ve killed 31 cats today already. We’ve never been busier. Some people are superstitious and believe they bring them strength and good fortune. Lawyers, policeman and company directors eat them at the start of the lunar month.”
One customer says that cats are the best meat because, “Cats are particular about what they eat so the meat is cleaner and better for you inside”.
Cat meat is becoming more popular because customers have more money. The best cats are two and a half years of age and are about two and a half kilograms in weight.
Source: Daily Mail
I fully understand (and accept) that cultural traditions and taboos will dictate which animals people eat in certain countries. However, what I do object to is the abject cruelty involved in the keeping and killing of that “livestock” in some of those countries.
We in the West, do not beat livestock to tenderise the flesh, boil the animal and skin it whilst it’s still alive and gasping for breath. Those are the cruel slaughter methods, widely practised in some cultures. Believe me, those images once seen are NEVER forgotten.
Many people keep cows and pigs as pets too, this doesn’t stop them from enjoying a good slab of bacon or McBurger.
Some of these people should grow up on a community where they have a 4H organization in many rural communities. It’s not uncommon to raise a pet pig, goat, sheep, or cow for competition; then slaughter it later for the weekend barbeque. Too many people have grown-up in their mommie’s basements and remained in that limited scope of the real world.
These are just the diseases these invasive species vermin cats have been spreading to humans, not counting the ones they spread to all wildlife. THERE ARE NO VACCINES against many of these, and are in-fact listed as bio-terrorism agents. They include: Afipia felis, Anthrax, Bartonella (Rochalimaea) henselae (Cat-Scratch Disease), Bergeyella (Weeksella) zoohelcum, Campylobacter Infection, Chlamydia psittaci (feline strain), Cowpox, Coxiella burnetti Infection (Q fever), Cryptosporidium Infection, Cutaneous larva migrans, Dermatophytosis, Dipylidium Infection (tapeworm), Hookworm Infection, Leptospira Infection, Giardia, Neisseria canis, Pasteurella multocida, Plague, Poxvirus, Rabies, Rickettsia felis, Ringworm, Salmonella Infection, Scabies, Sporothrix schenckii, Toxocara Infection, Toxoplasmosis, Trichinosis, Visceral larva migrans, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis. [Centers for Disease Control, July 2010] Bird-flu, Bovine Tuberculosis, Sarcosporidiosis, Flea-borne Typhus, Tularemia, and Rat-Bite Fever can now also be added to that list.
Yes, “The Black Death” (the plague) is alive and well today and being spread by people’s cats this time around. Many people have already died from cat-transmitted plague in the USA; all three forms of it transmitted by CATS — septicemic, bubonic, and pneumonic. For a fun read, one of hundreds of cases, Cat-Transmitted Fatal Pneumonic Plague — http : / / www . ncbi . nlm . nih . gov / pubmed/8059908
http : / / www . abcd-vets . org / Guidelines/Pages/EN-Other-Zoonoses-Feline-Plague . aspx
“Recommendations to avoid zoonotic transmission
Cats are considered the most important domestic animal involved in plague transmission to humans, and in endemic areas, outdoor cats may transmit the infection to their owners or to persons caring for sick cats (veterinarians and veterinary nurses).”