Civet Cat. Dipped In Piss. It’s What’s For Dinner
Anyone that is planning to go to China for the Olympics needs to pack a bag lunch. Those whacky Chinese have no regard for food health safety. Its almost as if they are trying to create some super disease, because SARS just wasn’t deadly enough.
Civets look cute, but taste like Chinese Chicken.
From Reuters here:
Scorpions scamper in bowls, water snakes coil in tanks and cats whine in cramped cages, waiting to be slaughtered, skinned and served for dinner.
Welcome to the Qingping market in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, where everything from turtles to insects are sold alongside fowl and freshly caught fish.
An outbreak of the SARS virus in 2002 resulted in a local gourmet favorite — the civet — being banished to the black market. The raccoon-like animal was blamed for spreading SARS, which infected 8,000 people globally and killed 800.
Frozen civets confiscated in 2004.But exotic wildlife and squalor have returned to the Qingping market, making health officials worried that another killer virus could emerge.
In a dark shop near the new medicine mall, feces and urine drip like goo thorough stacked cages of squawking chickens and meowing cats.
Although Guangdong authorities culled thousands of civets in January 2004, investigators recently found the animals, as well as badgers and pangolins, on the black market and in Guangdong’s “wild flavour” restaurants, where diners hope exotic meats will bring good fortune.
A kitchen worker hits a water rat on the head to stun it before it is killed for a meal in a restaurant in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou. Take note of the puddles of fluid on the floor. Heh, those whacky Chinese! Is there anything they won’t eat?Health inspectors found 14 frozen and one live civet cat, and 22 kilograms of civet cat meat from 18 animals in a sweep of restaurants across the province.
Among Qingping’s cats and chickens were tiger paws, turtles, insects of myriad varieties, and bundled strips of shredded toads — some food, others medicine.
So exotic meat brings the Chinese good fortune? Is the fortune cookie not good enough?
Pat, here’s some civet trivia for you.
Kopi Luwak – It’s a coffee made from the ingested, partially digested, and then pooped out coffee berries that civets will eat. It’s about $300 per pound.