Activists Save 1K Cats Bound to Become Dinner

Traders planned to pass off their meat as lamb, pork: report
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 25, 2023 5:35 PM CDT
Activists Save 1K Cats Bound to Become Dinner
Stock photo of cats in a cage.   (Getty Images/Okssi68)

A truck carrying 1,000 cats was headed for a slaughterhouse when officers made a crucial stop, according to Chinese police. Tipped off by animal rights activists, officers in the port city of Zhangjiagang found the truck was transporting the captured felines to their deaths so their meat could be shipped south and sold as skewered meat or sausages labeled as pork or mutton, CNN reports, based on a report from Chinese state-affiliated news outlet The Paper. The report didn't say where the cats came from or whether police made any arrests. As CNN notes, the passing off of some type of meat as another is forbidden, though China has "no general law targeting animal cruelty for pets and stray dogs and cats."

Only certain parts of China ban the eating of cat and dog meat, and activist Gong Jian explains the appeal of the scheme to the Straits Times: "Cat meat is sold at 4.50 yuan a pound but at the market, mutton can be sold for 30 yuan a pound. Selling a skinned cat weighing around four to five pounds as mutton or pork, [the dealers] get to keep the entire price difference as profit." Activists reportedly noticed cats inside nailed wooden boxes near a cemetery in Zhangjiagang, Jiangsu province. Days later, when the truck began moving the boxes, the onlookers alerted police.

The cats were taken to a shelter—The Paper shares photos of several snoozing in large crates—while social media users griped about a lack of animal rights and food safety laws in the country, per WION. The Straits Times reports details about the recovered cats have been posted online so any owners missing cats can try to locate theirs; after a month the animals will be put up for adoption. (More China stories.)

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