A Vietnamese restaurant selling cat meat has closed its doors permanently following a storm around it due to tectonic shifts in perceptions in the country, considered one of the world's largest consumers of cat meat. We used Claude to bring the shocking story with an optimistic ending.
The restaurant and cat slaughterhouse was run by Pam Quoc Duan, killing over 300 cats each month by drowning them in water to use their meat for soup and meat dishes. Duan expressed regret for the suffering he caused the animals – especially for doing so despite knowing that many of the cats he drowned to death were other people's pets, stolen by local black market dealers.
After negotiations with Humane Society International (HSI), Doan agreed to close the restaurant and slaughterhouse, which had operated for 5 years, in exchange for a grant that would allow him to build a grocery store in its place. The remaining 20 cats were rescued and given up for adoption. Doan himself expressed remorse for his actions and support for a ban on the continued trade in cats for eating in the country.
Duan's collaboration follows growing opposition from the Vietnamese public to the cat meat trade, which kills about one million cats in the country every year. Although eating them is no longer as acceptable as in the past, parts of the public still believe that their meat confers health benefits or luck. However, a poll from late 2022 showed that 71% of Vietnamese currently support a total ban on cat meat. The government also issued guidelines to deter cat consumption, but later rescinded them.
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