China’s police have saved over a thousand cats that were scheduled to be killed and sold as mutton and pig.
Officers in Zhangjiagang, east of the country, discovered the cats inside a truck after receiving a tip from animal rights activists.
According to the BBC, the discovery of an illicit cat meat trade has raised new concerns about food safety in the nation.
They took the animals to a shelter. It’s unclear if they were strays or pets.
Activists claim that the going rate for cat meat in China is about 4.5 yuan (51p) per catty, or roughly 600g. Four to five kittens can be produced by a single cat.
After discovering the cats’ wooden crates in a cemetery, activists kept a six-day eye on them.
The activists halted the truck and called the police when they noticed the cat boxes being loaded onto it.
Chinese citizens were incensed by the tale, which was featured on the news website The Paper, and thousands of them expressed their displeasure on social networking site Weibo.
While some advocated for stricter regulations pertaining to food safety, others stated that more needed to be done to safeguard animals.
“I won’t be eating barbeque meat outside anymore,” a person commented.
“When will there be laws to protect animals?” inquired another. Do dogs’ and cats’ lives not matter?
Animal rights advocates have been pressuring the Chinese government to impose restrictions on the sale of dog and cat meat for decades.
Many of these animals are taken from their family and left for days without food or water in the back of lorries before being put to death.
China’s Shenzhen city made history in 2020 when it became the first mainland municipality to outlaw the manufacturing and consumption of dog and cat meat.
It was a part of a larger, post-coronavirus outbreak prohibition that also applied to wild animals.
It’s alarming to learn that other animals besides dogs and cats are also served up masquerading as different species.
A Jiangsu college student was appalled to discover a rat’s head in his food earlier this year.
The school first insisted it was duck meat but later acknowledged it was actually rat.
