- A restaurant in Thái Nguyên, Vietnam, that killed as much as 300 cats a month has shut down.
- Its proprietor stated he knew some have been folks’s pets however that he wanted the cash.
- The proprietor received a grant from Humane Society International to shut the restaurant.
A Vietnamese restaurant that drowned as much as 300 cats a month to feed diners has closed down.
Pham Quoc Doanh, the proprietor of Gia Bảo in Thái Nguyên, northeastern Vietnam, advised Metro that he knew some have been folks’s pets however that he did not have a alternative as a result of he wanted the cash.
Doanh stated that he added cat meat to the restaurant’s menu to make it extra worthwhile as a result of he was struggling to assist his household, noting that there have been no different eating places close by promoting the meat.
Doanh drowned the cats individually in a bucket, Metro reported. “I felt sorry for them when I saw them suffering during slaughtering,” he stated.
“When I think of all the thousands of cats I’ve slaughtered and served up here over the years, it’s upsetting,” Doanh stated in a press launch revealed by animal-welfare group Human Society International. “Cat theft is so common in Vietnam that I know many of the cats sold here were someone’s loved family companion, and I feel very sorry about that.”
In 2022, HSI began a program providing monetary incentives to Vietnamese eating places in the event that they cease promoting cat and canine meat and provides the animals up for adoption. Doanh was given a one-time grant in change for closing his restaurant and giving the animals away.
Chau Doan/AP Images for HSI
He now plans to open a grocery as an alternative, HSI stated.
‘Now that I’ve closed my cat-slaughter enterprise, I really feel extra peaceable in my thoughts and really feel assured and pleased about my future with out killing any extra animals,’ Doanh advised Metro.
The animal-welfare organizations Four Paws and Change For Animals Foundation claimed in a 2020 report that greater than 1 million stray and pet cats are killed in Vietnam yearly for his or her meat.
“Some restaurants purchase the animals directly from cat thieves and slaughter them themselves on their premises, but most operate with wholesalers and slaughterhouses,” Dr. Katherine Polak, veterinarian and Head of Four Paws Stray Animal Care in Southeast Asia, stated in a press launch. The cats are mostly drowned, however in some instances are bludgeoned to loss of life, boiled alive, or electrocuted, based on the report.
“At the wholesalers, we discovered many cats with collars — a clear sign that they were pets,” Polak stated.
HSI says its progam in Vietnam has additionally helped shut down two canine eating places in Thái Nguyên.
