China is the land of the food scandal, which makes any trip to a cheap restaurant an exercise in random cuisine. After all, it might say 猪肉 (pork), 牛肉 (beef) or 羊肉 (mutton) on the menu, but take your average hunk of mystery meat, double-fry it in a white-hot wok and slop enough jiang on top and it could be carved from the flank of an australus for all you know. And chances are, it won't be anything so glamorous. Most of the time, you concede to yourself that you are, in fact, eating meat of some kind, and thank your lucky stars for the soothing bliss of ignorance.

With completely clockwork regularity, some ghastly food scandal is uncovered in China. I've previously covered a few, here (piss-marinated donkey meat) and here (rotting pig bowels) and here (worm-ridden kimchi). One of the real thrills of living in China is trying to figure out if the corker of the week was from a restaurant you have eaten ate at. Fortunately for me, I live in Beijing, where strict, government supervision and the presence of the embassies apparently restrict, though by no means eliminate, the flow of low-rent fauna and unlicensed offal into the food supply. That's why I heaved a sigh of relief when I read the following, from Shanghai:
Some restaurants are serving cat: animal worker
Shanghai Daily
2006-01-06 09:14

Restaurant diners may want to skip the lamb.

Animal aid workers alleged some restaurants in Shanghai were serving cat meat that was listed on menus as mutton.

The Shanghai Small Animal Association, one of the earliest and most renowned NGOs in the city, said it has gathered enough evidence to make the charge after a one-year investigation.

The claim has not been confirmed by police or other authorities.

The association said stray cats were being sold to vendors who produced goods with the fur and sold the meat to restaurants.

Li Ruohai, the director of the association, said they launched the investigation a year ago after they repeatedly noticed stray cats were disappearing.

The association received frequent tips from its members or animal lovers that they saw people catching stray cats and selling them to food vendors.

Li said a team of volunteers from the association launched an undercover investigation.

Progress was slow at first. But recently, one of the investigators managed to get several pieces of "mutton" from a food vendor.

The meat was taken to a lab where one of the association's volunteers works. A DNA test found cat meat in two of the 12 samples, Li said.

Li showed Shanghai Daily the written report from the lab. He claimed it was strong evidence that stray cats were being eaten.
Indeed. You never want to hear that 15% of your mutton is, in fact, cat meat. I don't know about Shanghai, but in Beijing it wouldn't be hard to pass off cat as mutton. 羊肉串, the sticks of savory mutton scraps that you can buy for a kuai from thousands of holes-in-the-wall across the city, are the favorite midnight snack of the stumbling, drunk expat, staggering home from a late, winter night at the bars (er, I've been told). My wife describes them as "the dohner kebab of Beijing". So true. Blind drunk people who's senses of taste and smell have been obliterated by the howling, Siberian wind are easy marks for the ol' cat-meat scam. Fortunately, that same howling, Siberian wind keeps Beijing's stray cat population to a bare minimum, so I should hope there is less feedstock for the fraudulent chuan trade here than there is in relatively clement Shanghai.

Of course, the serving of cat meat should surprise no one. At a party I recently attended (hosted by Danwei's Jeremy, no less), a grizzled, China lifer told me tales of cat being served in Southern China. Southern China is, of course, globally renowned as the world capital for consumption of bizarre animals. It is also known as the world's cradle for exotic diseases. These two, swollen dots are not overly hard to connect. He also regaled me with tales of eating dog, which I have never tried. Dog is widely sold in Beijing, where it is considered a premium meat and comes with price tag to match. My new acquaintance was very complementary of it. "Tastes like donkey," he proclaimed as I nodded knowingly. I've never eaten donkey, and I have no idea what it tastes like (although you may see the story linked above for further insight into how it may be prepared). Apparently, it tastes like dog.

Dog notwithstanding, nobody serves cat above-board around here.

And rightly so. They might be retailed by dozen or sold by the --wait for it-- catty (pause for laffs) in the wet markets of Guangzhou. You might be able to get a whole, deep-fried kitten on a stick in Gansu (I made that up). But nothing will change the fact that cat is plain nasty. I don't know this from experience. I know it from inference as only a cat-owner can. Serving cat to people without their knowledge should be punishable by stoning to death. And I mean with rocks, not a spliff (although if you had a big enough spliff, Gansu kitten-on-a-stick might begin to seem appetizing). It's almost certainly not halal or kosher. You never see a bowl of cat soup at a Seder, and with good reason. You have to wander through the desert for a long time and smoke an absolutely monster spliff before cat seemed like a good idea.

Further down in the story, I was interested to read the following:

The Shanghai Food and Drug Administration didn't comment on the the Shanghai Small Animal Association's DNA report, but said it is illegal to sell cat meat.

"In China, animals such as sheep, cows, pigs and even dogs are listed as legal food materials, but never cats," said Gu Zhenhua, an official with the FDA.

"We have no food safety standards for cat meat because it's not supposed to be on the menu," Gu said. "Without food safety and quarantine checks, it's unsafe to serve cat meat."

The objection of the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration is truly wondrous because it's so deadpan. There is no question of whether cat might be nasty or inappropriate (no animal is inappropriate in China). It's simply a matter of procedure as the standards aren't in place. Perhaps Guangzhou's standards could be imported.

And that is, in the end, the great joy of China. In the end, the question of whether it is right or wrong to serve cat is simply one of bureaucracy. But then, in China, everything is a question of bureaucracy in the end. After all, the Chinese can rightly claim to have invented it. And they can rightly claim to have invented the 猫肉串 as well.