Restaurant That Drowned 300 Cats a Month To Make Cat Soup Shuts Down for Good
Pham Quoc Doanh, 37, ran the Gia Bảo restaurant in the Thịnh Đán ward of Thái Nguyên, the capital of the northeast province of the same name, for five years.
‘Specialty cat meat,’ the sign outside the eatery on Quang Trung Street once read, with a photograph of a wide-eyed black cat in the top-right corner.
Eating cats is relatively common in Vietnam, where the decade-old appetite for felines has seen their meat be considered an aphrodisiac, lucky charm and even a health-boosting superfood that combats Covid-19.
Doanh never wanted to sell cat meat. He never wanted to run a slaughterhouse drowning the animals to keep his diners’ bellies full, adding to the one million cats, mainly stray and stolen pets, killed for their meat a year in Vietnam.
‘Before selling cat meat at this restaurant, I served other normal food and drinks,’ the father-of-two tells Metro.co.uk.
‘However, the income was not enough to cover the living costs of my family. It was then I tried selling cat meat since there was no other available restaurant serving this in the area.’
One by one, Doanh would drown the cats in a bucket, holding them down with a stick. Knowing that some of the animals he was butchering were people’s beloved pets weighed heavily on his mind.
‘I felt sorry for them when I saw them suffering during slaughtering. It was all about money since I had to make money for my whole family,’ Doanh adds.
But earlier this month, he stood outside, surrounded by plastic yellow tables and chairs and nearly two dozen cats, as he tore down his restaurant sign.
He had reached out to Humane Society International (HSI), an animal rights group that began a campaign against the cat meat trade in Vietnam last year, for help.
As part of the organisation’s ‘Models for Change’ programme, Doanh struck a deal with HSI for a one-time grant to shutter Quán Gia Bảo for good, saving the lives of 20 caged cats and kittens.
The programme offers financial incentives to cat meat restaurant owners to switch to other livelihoods and give up their animals for adoption.
The cats were taken to an animal rescue centre run by the Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry for much-needed veterinary care, vaccination, and rehabilitation.
The animals will now be given to new owners to be loved and treasured as pets.
HSI, which successfully campaigned in South Korea to close down dog meat farms by 2027, has additionally helped close two dog slaughterhouses and restaurants in Thái Nguyên.
‘We are thrilled to be closing down our first cat meat trade business in Viet Nam and hope it will be the first of many as more people like Mr. Doanh turn away from this cruel trade,’ Quang Nguyen, HSI’s Vietnam companion animals and engagement programme manager, says.
Raising dogs and cats for meat remains popular in some countries, such as Switzerland, Indonesia, and Nigeria, where it is often cheaper than other meats, part of the local tradition, or thought to have special health properties.
It’s tricky to measure the global dog and cat meat trade. These industries often operate underground and are barely regulated, if at all.
Governments typically don’t classify cats or dogs as livestock the way cows and chickens are, meaning farmers don’t have to supply data on how many they’re slaughtering and selling off.
