this post was submitted on 25 Oct 2023
299 points (94.6% liked)

World News

39184 readers
1608 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

Similarly, if you see posts along these lines, do not engage. Report them, block them, and live a happier life than they do. We see too many slapfights that boil down to "Mom! He's bugging me!" and "I'm not touching you!" Going forward, slapfights will result in removed comments and temp bans to cool off.

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 60 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I see nobody in the comments actually bothered reading the article. It's not that cat meat is illegal, it's that they were passing it off as pork and beef. Also some speculation that the cats might have been stolen

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also some speculation that the cats might have been stolen

Almost has to be the case. There is a reason no one farms cats as meat, they are obligate carnivores that will eat more meat than they ever produce. It isn't economical to produce cats for meat if you have to actually feed them. It only makes sense to "harvest" them wild on the streets or from kitten mills, shelters, vets, wherever you find spare cats in China.

Framing animals for meat only really makes sense if those animals eat lower on the food chain. Turning grass / grains into meat makes sense. Turning meat into meat doesn't, especially since the cats would pretty much have to be eating more desirable meat that they produce. Imagine feeding pork, fish, and chicken to cats in order to make cat meat.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

That's where the stolen rats come in...

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

if they "rescued 1000 cats" from being sold as pork meat, that means at least 1,000,000 cats are sold as pork every day.. this is just a little show for the newspapers..

so if you're actually in China right now eating what you think is "pork", Bon Appetit i guess

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (27 children)

if they "rescued 1000 cats" from being sold as pork meat, that means at least 1,000,000 cats are sold as pork every day

What kind of logic is that? Why stop at a million, why not a billion.

load more comments (27 replies)
[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Why is it worse to eat a cat than to eat a pig?

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

It's not, but if it's being sold as pork it's a problem

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Because a pig is smarter and cats are devious minions of satan

load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'm just wondering how you get enough meat off a cat that it's worthwhile. Most livestock are herbivores because herbivores are larger and much easier to feed. Cats are obligate carnivores, even if you're feeding them scrap meat you're going to wind up with them eating far more meat than they produce and I can't imagine that they produce much usable meat. It just seems like it would be easier and cheaper to just raise actual pigs than to try and get the same amount of meat off of a bunch of cats.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I doubt they are farming the cats so much as collecting them from the streets and everywhere else.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even so rounding up a bunch of cats still seems like the most high effort way to get meat compared to literally any other animal. Even just talking about wrangling strays, dogs seem like a better choice because then you at least get a bit more meat. Cats just don't seem like they would have enough usable meat to even be worth the effort of butchering them. Unless these are some especially chunky feral cats, all the ones I've seen are basically just fur and bone.

[–] ryathal 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's pretty easy to trap feral cats. Feral dogs are less common and harder to deal with. It really only takes bait as a recurring expense, at about say 10 cents per cage to get 1-2 pounds of meat that is worth at least $1per pound is pretty good return.

[–] Piemanding 5 points 1 year ago

They probably also get their children to do it and the cost of meat there is probably a good bit more expensive compared to income than somewhere like the US.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (2 children)

From the article, the crime is not that they are selling cat meat, but that they're mislabelling it as pork and beef

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

And doing so for profit...

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

cats and dogs matter, but cows, chickens, lambs, sheep, pigs etc don't matter. Yep. Makes sense :/

They all have the same capacity to suffer. So why look after some animals but not others?

[–] [email protected] 27 points 1 year ago (1 children)

From a pure practical standpoint, it doesn't make sense to eat carnivores. Terrible feed conversion. We don't want to raise meat to feed it to meat. Traditionally, ruminants were a way of converting inedible grass into nutritious meat and dairy.

Also, carnivores are a lot harder to handle... They bite! Cats jump and dogs dig. I farm. The livestock stay inside the fence, cats and dogs go where they please.

The animals in your first list are carnivores (cats are an obligate carnivore) while the second list are herbivores or omnivores that do well on a vegetarian diet. That's why we eat the second list and not the first.

Also humans like dogs, they're a lot like us despite being a smelly 4-legged bitey critter. It's quite odd, really. We've evolved together for millennia at this point. More so than any other species on earth, dogs have a place in our society alongside humans, with their own jobs and skill sets.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

I lived in a few places in China for a year. This is either new, or completely fake. If cats and dogs were sold/eaten for food they would be in the market next to the turtles, above the fish tanks, and under the pigeons. Not a joke.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

My bullshit detector is going off hard over this article, and I'm a vegetarian. With those disclaimers out of the way, if you think the suffering of a cat and cow are equal, and accept that some people are going to eat meat, you get a hell of a lot more meat out of a cow than a cat.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

But cat is cheaper. It grows for free in the city.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

The cow is perfect if you're running a farm.

A cat is perfect if you're trying to save some money on meat and you don't have to raise it, just catch it

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (13 children)

Eating someones pet is different than eating an animal being raised to be eaten. For starters you have to kidnap the pet.

load more comments (13 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

So what is the police going to do with the cats now?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Reminds me of this song I heard back in the 90s

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments
view more: next ›