Cats boiled alive–inhumane?

Recently some restaurants in Guangdong, China, have been promoting a popular dish called “water boiled live cat”.The way the restaurants kill the cats is very cruel and inhumane. One of the chefs even says “the more torture the cats receive, the better they taste.”They use a bat and beat the cats until they pass out; then throw them into hot water and boil them alive, then de-skin and cook them again.One restaurant in Pan Yu district, even has a cat “shelter” in their back yard.Customers go out back and pick which cat they want to eat and the chef will beat the chosen cat half to dead and boil it alive. Not just wild cats end up on the dinner table, some high class cats like Persians will end up a meal as well.

The Menu offers the following choices and prices:

• Cat meat￥10 ($1.25)/lb
• Cat’s brain ￥30 ($3.5)/lb
• Cat’s intestine ￥50 ($6.4)/lb

Lets just hope this is not another prelude to a SARS breakout like before.

Source

After I read this, I was a little sickened, but not to the point that I would start labeling everyone who ate cat meat. Although I don’t condone eating cats, I don’t find this unforgivable either. These cats are just being treated like a slew of other animals that most humans eat, including chickens, cows, pigs, etc. I’m a bit appalled at how people have responded to this passage; my relatives come from the province of Guang Dong and we don’t eat cats. It’s a delicacy, just like I’m sure horse meat in France is. Although being boiled alive is something I cringed a bit when I read, a variety of seafood have traditionally been boiled alive. This is only just another case.

Edit: Considering that I recently found out that animals which are struggling and are fearful when killed usually result in less quality meat, I deem the above article about boiling cats alive FALSE. After all, most livestock are killed (or stunned) with a captive bolt pistol to prevent the meat from spoiling because of the pain and suffering the animal would have to endure while it is bleeding. Considering that this article said the owners would beat the cats until they passed out, the cat meat would have spoiled or tasted worse through this method. Thus, the above quoted article is entirely FALSE.