The huge demand for cat meat in Guangdong has fuelled a debate over the practice of eating pets.
A controversial article in the Guangzhou-based Yangcheng Evening News has claimed that 10,000 cats are eaten in the province every day. Older cats are said to taste the best and are believed to keep those who eat them warm in the winter.
Intrigued by the amount of complaint letters after a cat-meat restaurant advertised in the newspaper, reporters interviewed restaurant owners and meat suppliers in Guangdong. Their discoveries appalled cat lovers.
Although cat-meat restaurants are now rare since the trend among the nouveau riche a few years ago for eating exotic food has subsided, small food stalls and hot-pot restaurants still serve cat meat as a delicacy.
One employee at a meat market told the newspaper that people had turned from eating game to eating cats as a cost-cutting measure. A cat stall in the game-meat market can easily sell 500kg of cat meat a day in winter.
'We made a rough estimate. There are about 80 stalls selling cats in the three [game meat] markets. If each sell about 300 to 400kg of cat meat, then the conservative estimate is that they sell about 10,000 cats a day,' the paper said.