Eating Cats in Thai binh

[BuffHello]

Thai Binh: ?city of cat meat?

14:40' 02/11/2005 (GMT+7)

 

Soạn: AM 606187 gửi đến 996 để nhận ảnh này

A restaurant selling cat meat in Thai Binh City.

 

 

Cat meat becomes a ?fashion? in northern Thai Binh province.

 

 

 

Restaurants selling cat meat appear on every street corner in Thai Binh, where local people rush on early days of the month to eat cat to relieve themselves of bad luck.

 

 

 

Eating cat ? a new ?fashion?

 

 

 

Returning to Thai Binh in early September, a group of close friends decided to take me to eat cat meat. At state-owned organizations in the city, employees often discuss which kind of cat meat they will eat each month: ?rural? cat or ?aristocratic? cat. While struggling with the concept of rural or aristocratic cat, we arrived at a restaurant on Nguyen Thai Hoc Street, advertising ?rural cat?.

 

 

 

On the sidewalk a basket of pale catheads looked terrible; next to it another big basket was being filled with barbecued cat meat by a seller brandishing a knife. After a short time, a cat was chopped into different parts and arranged onto plates; however, we discovered that this pile of cat meat had been ordered in advanced so we would have to wait.

 

 

 

At this restaurant, customers can select live cats and then observe the slaughter and processing of the cat meat into different dishes. By choosing live cats, customers are assured of freshness, and that the cat has not been poisoned.

 

 

 

Common customers can eat yellow cat, middle class customers can eat tri-coloured cat while the rich can eat black cat. Black cat and wildcat, known as ?aristocratic cat? can fetch VND1mil (US$62.5) per 2kg cat.

 

 

 

This restaurant is famous in Thai Binh for its professional butchers who wake up at 5 in the morning and work hard all day serving customers.

 

 

 

The butchers pull the good-natured cats out of big iron cages, tighten a lasso around their necks, and then throw their desperate victims into a pitch-dark water tank. The poor cats struggle for a while before sinking deep into the water tank. The limp bodies are then put into an old machine, resembling a washing machine that plucks the cats hair. After the hair is removed, the cats are hung on a rotisserie and roasted to dark brown; they are then disemboweled and processed into dishes.

 

 

 

Witnessing the savage scene, I pulled my camera from my bag but I didn?t have a chance to take a photo because the restaurant owner and several butchers appeared, and we departed to avoid complications.

 

 

 

After leaving Nguyen Thai Hoc Street, we strolled along Le Dai Hanh road, where many cat restaurants are located, before reaching Ly Thuong Kiet Street, known as the kingdom of cat restaurants in Thai Binh.

 

 

 

There are around a dozen cat restaurants along this street, the most famous being Tuan Beo restaurant, the five-storey Ngoc Thao that offers numerous dishes of cat, and Duyen?s Cat Meat boasting three female butchers.

 

 

 

A restaurant named ?Aha! Steamed cat? left a strong impression on me, with advertising depicting a black cat, and a cage hanging at the front door with around 50 cats of all different colours.

 

 

 

To learn more about cat meat trading in Thai Binh, I spent one week in the province, traveling from urban to rural areas. In Thai Binh City, cat restaurants are arranged as follows: Le Dai Hanh street (6 restaurants), Ly Thuong Kiet (10), Ly Bon (7), and Hai Ba Trung (5), many exclusive restaurants are located deep inside alleys without signage, I calculated around one hundred.

 

 

 

The first restaurant I visited on Nguyen Thai Hoc Street sells over 100 cats per day, similar to other big restaurants; around 1,000 cats are slaughtered at around 100 restaurants in Thai Binh each day.

 

 

 

Cat meat has also been added to the menu of parties in Thai Binh, with wedding parties killing hundreds of cats. Tens of thousands of cats are eaten annually in this small city, the reason why it has been named ?the city of cat meat?.

 

 

 

Helpless cats on restaurant menus?

 

 

Soạn: AM 606197 gửi đến 996 để nhận ảnh này

Cats are roasted at the sidewalk of Nguyen Thai Hoc Street.

 

The prime minister recently issued an instruction revoking business licences of cat restaurants and punishing cat traders.

 

 

 

Regarding Thai Binh?s execution of this instruction, Tran Sy Hieu, Head of the Environmental Protection Department of Thai Binh Province said: ?We have inspected cat restaurants and asked them to stop operation. But we only have the rights to inspect them, not punish them?.

 

 

 

According to Hieu, related bodies in Thai Binh are at a deadlock in seeking measures to protect cats, as consumption of cat meat develops strongly. To protect cats, they need to enlist the help of police.

 

 

 

Research by Dr Nguyen Van Thanh from Hanoi Agriculture University, shows that a field mouse can deliver 80 baby mice every two months. In one year, a couple of mice can directly and indirectly deliver 2,160 mice and if each field has 1,000 mice, around 6,000 baby mice are born everyday.

 

 

 

According to a national survey, the number of mice in Vietnam in the first three months of 1998 was around 30mil, causing losses of at least VND30bil ($1.875mil) per day. Dr Thanh said that breeding cats is the most helpful measure to fight against mice because each cat can catch about 400 mice a year.

 

 

 

Thai Binh people know clearly about the role of cats in killing mice, but the herd of cats there is smaller and smaller because of the development of cat restaurants and the ?trend? for eating cat meat.

 

 

 

Mice now have the chance to develop and destroy rice fields while Thai Binh people are dependent on Chinese mouse poisons, which are less effective and have caused many fatalities.

 

It?s pitiful for Thai Binh?s farmers, who love the role cats play, but also love to eat them in restaurants.

 

 

 

(Source: Cong An Nhan Dan)