LA Times on cats as food in Guangdong
Dog is eaten in many parts of China, but only in Guangdong do people eat cat. It is rare to see a stray wandering the streets. Many cats served for supper here are shipped down from the north.Chinese seek to pull cats from the menuThe Small Animal Protection Assn. says one Guangzhou-based business captures up to 10,000 cats per day from different parts of China. The cat snatchers are typically formerly unemployed people who use large fishing nets and are paid $1.50 per cat.
"They've eaten all their cats so they have to take ours from Beijing. People don't want to let their cats go out on the street," said Zhao Ming, a 55-year-old physician who was among about 40 people demonstrating in Beijing.
The cat trade thrives in a seemingly boundless gray area of commerce. Police are reluctant to charge the cat catchers with theft because many of the cats involved live outside and, in the famously independent way of cats, are not technically owned by humans, merely fed and nurtured.
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Aw...now I has a sad
Damn those foreign pussy eaters!
Well, if it's anything like rat stirfry...
I lived in China for 3 years and never heard about cat-eating. Dog hot pot, yeah, but no cat.
But who knows. They say the Cantonese will eat everything with wings except for airplanes and everything with legs except for tables.
Cat snatching sounds like a lucrative industry.
I know that it's a matter of cultural differences, but damn, I just think it's horrible that people would even consider eating cats and dogs.
Eating cat isn't far detached from eating rabbit, though. They're adorable, they're kept as pets... rabbits even clean their fur the same way cats do.
I blame ethanol.
Don't dispute me. It's science.
what does eating Guanddong chef do for you?
If only I had one dollar for each time I heard that...
#9 posted by zuzu
Don't dispute me. It's science.
Is that how science works?
__
If you have to ask, you'll be difficult to teach.
Just go with it.
Back when I lived in Lesotho, the old men would say "once you've had cat, you'll never want chicken again." And if they saw me petting a cat, they'd say, in all seriousness, "If you let me have the meat, I'll let you have the hat" - it's not uncommon in Lesotho to see people wearing a cap made of cat fur, with the cat's face, tail and paws all still attached.
there is a market in guangzhou called the "edible zoo" due to the fact that all manner of animals are on offer there... not for pets. Strangely, it's not fashionable enough for PETA to protest it.
The Chinese also say that people in Guangdong are inscrutable and bad drivers.
It occurred to me a few weeks ago that in a culture where dogs are acceptable food animals, you could make the canine equivalent of a turducken pretty easily. A chihuahua inside a scotty inside a bulldog, perhaps. You could even add another layer or two on top of that.
I like cats but prefer reading stories of chinese eating their domestic cats to stories of:
- Rhinos which have been sacrificed so some impotent chinese guy can sprinkle some powdered horn to treat his impotance.
- Tiger paws being used to treat same
- Gorilla/Chimp hands&feet being used to treat same.
- Shark genocide to satisfy a chinese taste for shark fin soup.
Let them eat their cats, at least they are a renewable ressource.
Yum Cats - with Mayonaise.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21xTnfrXXiU
This is just bad, sensationalist reportng.
I lived in Guandong for years (Shenzhen and Gunagzhou) and one of the first things I noticed was the LARGE number of stray cats (about 10 just in our small apartment block). I can also confirm that they weren't being eaten as i watched these little guys grow up.
They do eat cats in China but cat meat is considered bad quality and is only eaten by the very very poor, and it is certainly not in short supply.
LA Times should know better than to make up drivel about this kind of thing.
That said, I did see tiger paws for sale once, sad.
Here in the US, squirrel and possum are popular. Older editions of Joy Of Cooking show how to skin and butcher them.
cellomaestro - LA Times should know better than to make up drivel about this kind of thing.
Seriously? The LA Times sucks pretty badly. I think this is about what I've come to expect form them.
So the LA Times is trying to raise its count of Letters to the Editor (including e-mails) to demonstrate readership and justify its continued pathetic dead-tree existence?
LA has such a large Chinese population that I can't imagine any other reason for publishing this ethnocentric, ignorant, and trivial article, which could have been published in the '60s.
Cat, dog, cow, goat, what's the difference?
I love my cat, but really they're all just as sentient and capable of feeling pain as any other animal.
First Neatorama, now here. Nothing "wonderful" or "neat" about this, and the only thing I want to hear about it is how it's being STOPPED.
It can't be healthy to eat a cat that's spent its life wandering the streets, gutters, and abandoned buildings of a polluted industrial metropolis, mainly eating the rats and mice it finds there. As much as I love cats, I don't see anything wrong the humane farming of them for food... snatching them off the street, however, is another matter.
Toxoplasma gondii
Also, lead, antifreeze, pesticides, and galaxy of other carcinogens that rats and cats don't naturally live long enough to suffer from anyway... but humans do.
I've been to Guangzhou a number of times and love to walk the food market streets early in the morning. I've seen cat, dog, and rabbit for sale as live food, as well as scorpions, grubs and nearly every kind of bird and aquatic critter you can imagine. The cats and dogs I saw didn't look like strays or pets. I've even seen a stall owner selling cats and dogs in cages for food, but with an obvious pampered pet dog right behind the counter. It didn't seem that strange, just a different perspective on what animals are acceptable for food in the Cantonese culture compared to ours.
Not that I would ever eat cat (I own three as pets), but why is eating cat or dog any different from cow, pig, chicken, duck, fish, squid, or any of a number of other animals? Just because we (by which I mean North Americans) keep them as pets doesn't mean they wouldn't be edible (perhaps even tasty).
Besides, have you seen how quickly cats breed? They can have litters of 8-10 every few months and mature within a year. That's a lot more productive than cows! Around here (the frozen prairies), cats are regularly kept in the barns to kill mice and are regularly eaten by wolves or other wildlife. Sure doesn't keep them from overpopulating.
I say, if somebody on the other side of the world wants to eat cats, by all means, help yourself. We've got plenty in animal shelters over here; eat them before we have to put them down!
I can't eat cat for the same reason I can't eat cephalapod or primate.
They're too damned smart.
The Chinese fur trade skins dogs alive so you can have fur trimmings on your clothes and trinkets.
They are supplying local and global consumerism.
No outcry about that due to ignorance. It will be different when you see a tin of cat meat in your local delicatessen.
Few people know where the fur comes from, so most people don't care.
www.peta.org.uk/feat/dogcatfuruk.asp
(it is not hyperlinked as several unicorn chasers will be required after viewing.)
Two more famous Guangdong dishes:
"Tiger fights Dragon."
Cat and snake meat served together.
"Three Squeak Mouse."
Baby mice, still hairless, eaten live.
You catch one with your chopsticks, it squeaks.
Dip it in hot oil, it squeaks again.
Bite into it, and by golly there's your third squeak.
On my first trip to China I visited one of the big food/animal markets in Guangzhou and asked a cat salesman whether the cats were intended for pets or food. He grinned big and said "whatever you want."
Of course my Chinese at the time was pretty rudimentary, so I may actually have asked him whether the cats were for food or having sex with. Which I suppose would have explained the grin...
Whether or not you think cats are too special to eat (I do) or eat other animals (I do that too), I find it fascinating that the desire for a more meat-rich diet is so persuasive-in a country where being a vegetarian is no big deal or huge problem. For the effort involved cats won't give as much meat as a bunny. I wonder how cat ranks in terms of cost at the market, if its extra-dietary properties are the real selling point.
I do think it's gross to eat a particular animal because you thing it will help with baldness or virility.
(see, guys are ones who fall for these ideas. And yet, they think they can run the world?)
I'm ethnic Chinese, but not living in China. Never been there. There's a saying amongst the Chinese here ... the Chinese will eat anything. It's a popular believe. The conversation will usually go, "I know a friend of a friend/relative who eats cat/dog/snake/baby-rat/insert-your-favourite-weird-creature."
I don't actually know anybody who eats anything strange. I doubt that are very many of them. The usual meats anyone ever eat are chicken, pork, duck, cows, lamb, goat; although many may avoid some/all of the last 3 because they do not like the taste; and some are vegetarians for religious reasons.
Hmmm, I wonder how many immigrants from Guangdong province are running all-you-can-eat chinese buffets in L.A.?
Meow?
It's what's for dinner.
Why do they go to all the trouble of paying Beijing cat snatchers? Surely if you want lots of cats you'd get them the same way as any other animal... by breeding them.
just two days ago i saw a news item about a shipment of stray dogs being intercepted by the police. these dogs were on their way to the northern part of the country, where the region is mountainous and chilly, and dog meat is claimed to warm the body. some of the dogs were strays snatched off the streets. some of them were sold by their owners. all of them were gagged and bound, stuffed together inside a container van.
honestly i don't see the difference between eating dog and eating other animals, i must have eaten one before stuffed in some dimsum, but stealing and eating someone's pet is a bit amiss. not too keen on the butchering, but having been on a farm and privy to the grisly ends of goats, pigs and chickens, i understand the necessity.
if the smartest cat was as intelligent as the slowest human, would it still be OK to eat one?
"No, no, Hodge shall not be shot."
Zuzu @ 26:
The headline of that article was tragically hilarious.
Perhaps hypocritically though, because I just had bacon for breakfast followed by a ham supper, and pigs are smart -- smarter than some breeds of dog. (I even fed my pet dog some ham. Maybe somewhere in Guangdong someone is feeding their pet pig some dog meat.)
But I don't give any particular validation to genomes, which is why a fetus isn't a person and abortions are within the scope of morphological freedom (aka "my body, my choice"). Even newborn infants aren't people; all human infants are biologically born "premature" to fit through the birth canal, which has narrowed because humans (and their pelvises) evolved to bipedal locomotion.
So, if you're faced with the choice of saving the life of either a newborn infant or an adult great ape, choose the great ape.
Zu, that Singer link is really interesting, thanks for bringing it to my attention.
"Even newborn infants aren't people" - "So, if you're faced with the choice of saving the life of either a newborn infant or an adult great ape, choose the great ape."
Zuzu, wth? That was fucked up. Take it back.
"Take it back."
1. ZuZu was referencing the work of Peter Singer, linked above.
2. If you read the article you will see the rationality of the stance, regardless of what you think of it, and perhaps debate it rather than try to censor it.
3. If it is truly ZuZu's opinion, it is freely made.
...and "wth"? C'mon, surely cursing in acronyms is ok.. no?
I always said, "so many cats, so few recipes," but I guess in Guangdong that have plenty of cats and the recipes too...
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