Roast cat for Christmas dinner is not some weird and macabre idea dreamt up by one of the internet sickos. The title to this post reflects reality in a bastion of civilized life and pretty scenery: Switzerland.
There are about eight million people living in Switzerland (about the same as London, UK) so the country is not that densely populated. We are told that 3% of Swiss eat cat and dog meat. That may surprise some people but there is a contingent of Swiss who indulge in eating what I’ll call “pet meat” and others who traded in cat fur which, although banned in 2013, was a not insignificant business in Switzerland. Therefore, for cat lovers, amongst the chocolate box landscape there is something unpleasant going on.
Three percent of the Swiss population represents about a quarter of a million people (250,000), a big number. If half of these eat cat that makes at least 125,000 cats slaughtered annually for food in the heart of Europe. There would be uproar in the UK if a single cat was killed and eaten.
Apparently there is a minimal homeless cat problem in Switzerland (few stray cats). I wonder if this is linked to the subject matter of this article?
What surprised and frankly shocked me was that we are also told that cat can be eaten for Christmas dinner. Dog meat is turned into sausages to help relieve rheumatism. The “rheumatism-pet-meat-remedy” concept is one I have heard of before. It applies to cat meat in China, which indicates to me that this is just ignorant superstition handed down from generation to generation.
Marc (a regular on PoC) who lives in Switzerland says that the Swiss who eat cat meat are farmers living in remote places in regions such as: Appenzell, Lucerne, Jura and Berne.
It is entirely legal and nothing can be done to stop it. It is probably a longstanding tradition. And what is insensitive is that in some households they’ll kill the cat and eat it for Christmas. As I understand it this is not commercial killing and selling of cat meat. It is a person killing a cat which lives in and around the household or on the farm and eaten by the family. It is therefore a behind closed doors process and gross as far as I am concerned. I suppose we have to respect different cultures but I find this hard to stomach.
Some Swiss feel the same way. Tomi Tomek, president of the animal rights group SOS CHATS Noiraigue started a petition which received 16,000 signatures. Will it change things? I doubt it.
Many people don’t see the difference between eating pets to eating pigs. I do. The former is a companion animal, which is the agreed role, while the latter is reared and killed under licence and regulation for the purpose of feeding humans.
This is a despicable practice.This is the 21rst century,time to be enlightened,I don’t care what the culture.Humanity is going in the wrong direction.
It shows what is deep inside the human psyche because even in well developed countries there is what I consider to be mass cat abuse.. We are not a very pleasant species when we look at ourselves critically.
The solution clearly lies in the ream of cat social engineering: if caught young, weaned on soy milk and hand raised on tofu-fed rats, kittens can be turned into upstanding vegans.
The real problem comes when Swiss cats come of age and must report for military training, cats being traditionally relegated to rat catching on Swiss Navy customs launches where their conditioning may be undone when sailors offer to share their salt rat rations.
I guess you’re talking about roast human for Christmas when cats rule the world 😉 I can think of a few humans who would roast up nicely.
I was surprised to see this news on “B.B.C” television previously having read about it on “P.O.C”.Now i realize the reason of not seeing cats or dogs on the streets of Engelberg a beautiful ski resort town in Switzerland during a tour of Western Europe in 2010. People including me are surprised because Switzerland is one of the World’s wealthiest Country’s with a high standard of living, education as well as Industrialization.How could some of its citizens be eating cat and dog meat ? In Vietnam ,Korea ,Cambodia and parts of China the taste for cat and dog meat developed as a result of famines and poverty which later became a staple menu to a few in these Country’s.Next time you think of “SWISS CHOCOLATES” and fancy “BRANDED WATCHES” also remember that Switzerland is the only Western First World country that considers cat and dog meat as a normal menu in its culinary cuisine.
Great, quality comment Rudolph. First rate.
The cruelty of the barbarous Swiss has only mounted since they last sacked Rome.
Is it really surprising that a nation sadistic enough to brand innocent watches would skin kittens in order to plunge them into boiling cheese?
This is some sort of subtle piss take. Quite enjoyed it but there is one person who does this sort of things and he is Woodsman001 aka Woodsman. I hope you are not him.
Every tortie or calico that I’ve ever had the privilege to love has been female. They’re exquisite, often dainty, and dignified. Don’t get me wrong. I love boys too. But, girls are extraordinary.
It would be nice to come across a male tortie or calico sometime; but, I don’t think that I would have any thoughts of whether they were rare or not. I would be more interested as to how their demure might differ from a female.
OOPS! Wrong article.
Sorry.
But, as long as I’m here, I guess I’ll comment having just come home after a Thanksgiving feast. Now, I feel like puking. The highlight is that I didn’t have to do the dishes today.
I don’t know if I have enough vocabulary to describe such an act. But, insane, barbaric, ignorant, nauseating, demented come to mind.
Even putting all of that aside, how could an average sized cat satisfy any Christmas feast appetite? I don’t see that there would be anywhere near enough meat. I grew up in a family of eight meat eaters, and even a normal meal consisted of no less than 20 pork chops piled on a platter.
Isn’t Switzerland quite a land of farm animals?
Let them eat goats and chickens!
SAD but don’t want to comment
but
thanks for sharing Michael 🙁
I was just reading that 12% of human beings are vegetarian now, 88% still haven’t evolved into the realisation that they too are made of meat and that all living creatures feel fear and pain no matter which species they are!
I think the human race will wipe itself out long before we all do evolve and then have to begin all over again, so let’s hope we all get it right next time.
A lot of people believe that the human race does have quite a short lifespan. Many species before us became extinct. Humans will be extinct in time. Good thought isn’t it 😉 LOL.
We will be gone anyway lol
How horrible is the thought of eating a cat, I can’t contemplate the thought but the meat hungry, ignorant remote farmers probably see no difference between cat, chicken or pig and it turns my stomach to think of the way any or all of them are killed. Legislation would be useless, if they’re so remote who is going to stop them. It isn’t necessary for humans to eat animals, I won’t say eat meat because that disguises the fact that it is animals that are being eaten, pigs, turkeys, cows, chickens and cats and dogs, killed in terror, fight or flight adrenaline flowing through their systems and being eaten by humans who can’t imagine a dinner being acceptable without the sacrifice of an animal’s precious life.
I think it is down to a farmer’s mentality. It is clearly wrong and shocking as it is Europe.
Absolutely it’ll have been going on for generation after generation and they will likely regard the family cat in the same way as people used to (maybe still do) get a pig every year to fatten up for Christmas. It’s horrible and nauseating to think it is happening to animals all the time all over the world.
This is terrible but since becoming veggie I couldn’t contemplate eating any animal or bird. It’s sad that people can’t celebrate an occassion like Christmas, the season of goodwill, without eating the flesh of an animal or bird who won’t see Christmas because they were killed for it.
‘Food’ animals and birds maybe are supposed to be ‘reared and killed under licence and regulation for the purpose of feeding humans’ but we all know that regulations are abused and many live in misery and die in fear and pain. All slaughterhouses don’t have CCTV yet and undercover investigators often expose the terrible abuse of the creatures killed there!
I’ll be sitting down to my Quorn roast on Christmas day knowing no animal or bird has suffered in life and death for my dinner.
I sometimes can hardly believe what hypocrites we humans are, some relatives have a pet pig in their pub yet serve up roast pork. What difference between those pigs?
But it’s the same old story, about pleasing customers and making money, as always and human beings selfish needs and satisfaction must come first no matter how animals and birds suffer for them.