Inspectors find skinned cat in Chinese restaurant

You have heard the rumours for years, but not until today has such conclusive evidence been presented that domestic animals are being prepared for eating in Belizean restaurants. If you are fond of cats you may want to leave the room because the pictures we are about to show are not pretty. Just before two on Monday afternoon a team of officers from the Fisheries Department was making a routine inspection of seafood at Lee Restaurant in San Ignacio. But instead of illegal conch or undersized lobsters, what they encountered was some freshly cleaned meat that looked suspiciously familiar. One animal, whose head was still intact, is obviously a cat. The other, while not precisely identified, is definitely not chicken, beef or pork. According to witnesses, the restaurant owner originally claimed that the mystery meat was gibnut. Fisheries officer Alfonso Avilez, the man who made the astonishing discovery, told cameraman Kent Pandy of Cayo Cable Vision how it happened.

Alfonso Avilez, Fisheries Officer

“What happen is that we from the Fisheries Department were on a routine patrol checking for conch and lobster since the conch season just closed and the lobster season just open. While doing the checks of the freezers and the premises, we noticed something funny in a bath-pan, so we decided to check. From what we realise and what we figured out, it was a cat. So what we did was place two of the members here and I went to look for the public health inspector. When he came to the premises, was when he confirmed it was a cat. The other one, we’re not quite sure what it is.”

While there is no doubt that one of the animals was a cat, an inspection by officers of BAHA has concluded that the second animal is definitely not a dog. Since shotgun pellets were found in the carcass, it is believed that the animal is either a quash or kinkajou, shot in the wild. Health authorities could not recall a cat being found in a Belizean kitchen, although several years ago some dog heads were found in the garbage outside of a Belize City restaurant. The possession of cat and dog meat in a restaurant is a violation of the Food and Drug Act and it is expected that the proprietors of Lee Restaurant, Lee Chun Hua and Chen Tian Kang will eventually be charged. While the consumption of cat and dog meat is virtually unknown in Taiwan and much of mainland China, it is common fare in the southern Chinese province of Canton. Canton is the home of many Chinese immigrants to Belize.