Cats show their panic, but once they are caught by cat dealers caged into the back, cat meat goes on the table and cat skin goes into the closet.
An Epidemic of the century has pushed China’s animal issues into the line of fire, though cats have always been an indifferent group, and the nightmare in the dark has never gone away.
In early February, as the Chinese rushed to do their New Year’s shopping before the New Year’s holiday, the sound of mournful cat cries came from a market in Xintian County, Yongzhou City, Hunan Province, where stall owners used long tongs to remove live cats from their cages and slaughter them on the spot. Hundreds of cats were packed into steel cages, and the asking price for a catty was RMB 19, comparable to pork, making it a good business for the butcher.
Finger cats for rabbits fur tricks
Not only cat meat on the table, cat fur also into the closet. The town of Daying in Hebei province is a major town for the distribution of raw materials and processing of fur in China, “cat skin (goods) are basically all produced on our side, where the supply price is low and shipments are large.” Fur manufacturer Zhang boss did not shy away from saying that he was selling “children’s catskin vest” in the e-commerce platform, the reporter followed the line to call to inquire, he said he could “tailor-made” hangtags according to customer order requirements, such as labeled as rabbit fur. “So many are so marked, because a cat skin, consumers are more afraid.”
Hebei is the hometown of fur, is also the production and processing of cat fur town.
Frankly speaking, cat skin goods is the eyes of fur traders “chicken ribs”. “Because doing work is relatively simple, so profits are very low, and now business is not good, competition is also very strong.” Zhang boss can not help but whine, “they are naturally dead, not artificially bred fur animals, a child cat skin vest, color, leather hardness requirements are not too high, the price is low, our side of the price is more than 70 yuan RMB.”
When the reporter pressed the cat skin is from stray cats? “This is not sure, we do not know this, the retailer to collect the cat skin over, we mainly collect the tanned skin, that skin is less.” Boss Zhang’s tone dodged, but then asked if he could take large orders? He in turn packaged that “large quantities can also be done, to find a special supply of raw materials to collect.”
The pandemic did not stop cat traders, and the Anti-Fur Society, an international animal welfare organization that has long been concerned about China’s black cat fur industry chain, posted on social media platforms in December 2020 that the sale of dog and cat fur in China is still an active “going concern.”
Who Killed China’s Cats
Such a current situation did not surprise Long Yuanzhi, a PhD from Tsinghua University in Beijing, who has visited large and small cities in China and participated in research work on the fur industry, “The source of cat fur is mostly the capture of stray cats, which are mostly abandoned domestic cats and their offspring bred outdoors.” She reveals the foul play behind the industry, “When these cats are captured, the meat is consumed and the fur is often made into a variety of fur products.”
In addition to stray cats, domestic cats also fall into the hands of cat dealers. Zhang Xiya, a Chinese animal protection activist who is involved in stray cat rescue, pointed out that “there are many free-ranging cats in the north, and cat dealers can catch dozens of cats in one night, and some sneak into residential communities to trap them. Almost everywhere there are cats, there will be cat dealers, which is a costless business.”
Chinese animal protection sources estimate that tens of millions of cats flow into the black industry chain every year.
China is arguably the world’s largest producer of cat fur, followed by other Asian countries, including Thailand and the Philippines. Daying Zhang boss of cat fur products are mainly sold to domestic China, Russia, he confessed, “domestic and Russian requirements are not too high quality, if the goods to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the price is much higher, because the requirements there are higher.”
Long Yuanzhi pointed out that in recent years there has been a lack of data research related to cat fur in China, and more than a decade ago international organizations surveyed and studied that at least 2 million cats are slaughtered for their skins each year, however, according to ACTAsia Action Asia’s 2017 published report on cat and dog fur, researchers researched a company in Guangdong that specializes in making cat skin mattresses, and just one handled 30, 400,000 cats each year.
Zhang Xiya agrees that this number is underestimated, and she projects with incomplete statistics that “the number of cat carriers that animal protection activists can intercept is extremely small, and each Time they intercept a car, there are hundreds or thousands of cats, and every day there are at least dozens of cat carriers across the country, so there are tens of thousands of cats a day, and it is not surprising to see tens of millions of cats in a whole year.”
She then cited an investigation by DPS volunteers at the Guijiang Market in Nanhai, Foshan City, Guangdong Province as an example, “One vendor said he could sell thousands of cats a day and tens of thousands a month, when there were 33 stalls selling cats in the market.” Zhang Xiya personally witnessed the bloody scene, “There were many bodies of young cats on the market floor, crushed and stuck to the ground by the car, and these cats fell from the cat carrier.”
Although the Nanhai Guijiang Market was forced to close 33 stalls in 2013 after a large protest by animal protection volunteers and numerous reports, Zhang Xiya pointed out that stallholders could not sell cats in the market and had actually moved to the underground market, while blatant cat sales are still common in markets around the country.
Pieces of children’s cat vests are stacked on the ground, as if the cats were knocked down and crushed. (Taken from Anti-Fur Society’s Facebook page)
The bloodthirsty black industry chain
Long Yuanzhi pointed out that the black industry chain is quite large, with various regions in China involved to varying degrees, each playing different functions such as transit and slaughter. According to Zhang Xiya, in terms of consumption terminals, Guangdong and Guangxi have a bad habit of eating cats, and the cat meat market is mainly concentrated in Guangdong and Guangxi, where there is a famous “dragon and tiger” dish with cats and snakes in the dishes; another consumption terminal is Hebei and Shandong, where the local fur industry is secretly engaged in. dark line, mixing cat meat with other meats; in addition, cat stealing and transporting cats are all over the country, with cat trucks intercepted from north to south.
Compared to the world’s mainstream fur industry, which mostly uses species such as mink, fox and raccoon, “the cat fur market is different and relatively low-priced goods, with one cat skin about RMB 30.” Long Yuan Zhi explains the alternative cat fur industry, “Cat skins are mostly made into undershirts, decorative fur balls, bedding (made from more than 10 cat skins spliced together and can be cut as windproof lining), and I often see stores selling cat fur products or people wearing them in third and fourth-tier cities in China.”
In the face of strong criticism from animal protection groups, people in the cat fur industry continue to use their brains to find a way out, Long Yuan Zhi observes, “A few years ago, you could still see many cat fur products on Taobao, and then Taobao banned the sale of cat and dog meat and fur, but now such markets and products still exist, and are instead sold through different channels or made into different products. “
This pair of young siblings wearing fur undershirts, walking in the streets of Taipei, the cat pattern flower color is particularly striking. (Mai Xiaotian Photography)
From Taipei to London cat skin on the street
Overseas market is one of the channels, this winter polar cold spell frequently, Taiwan is no exception, the road pedestrian warm clothing have come out, the reporter saw a pair of young siblings on the streets of Taipei, wearing fur undershirts, as if cloaked in Chinese field cat fur, with the Chinese e-commerce platform posted “cat skin vest” similarity is very high, the young siblings The mother said, “The fur undershirt was bought in Italy, the store said it was rabbit fur.”
“From the grain, texture and style, the possibility of cat fur is very high, it is almost identical to the cat fur we often see in China.” Long Yuan Zhi judged from the photos taken by the reporter, who herself adopted two Beijing stray cats, “scientifically it can be detected through DNA, but DNA may also have been destroyed during processing and tanning.”
“Most of the most expensive cat furs are triple-flowered cats, that is, white with yellow and black spots on a white background.” Long Yuan Zhi adds that she analyzes the differences between cat fur and rabbit fur, “Cat fur has soft guard hairs on the outer layer and a wavy undercoat on the inside, while rabbit guard hairs are shorter, less lustrous and usually monochromatic, without the stripes and spots found in undershirts.”
Cat fur also slipped unnoticed into fashionable neighborhoods in London, England, where in 2017 the International Animal Protection Organization investigated women’s high heels sold locally and sent them for inspection and found that the decorative fur balls on the tops came from cat hair. In fact, the European Union, the United States, Australia and other countries and regions have legislation to ban the import of dog and cat fur, but the decree did not let the cat fur disappear.
Long Yuan Zhi believes that many cat fur is dyed, processed, as well as decorative fur, most consumers do not realize that it may come from cats, to London’s high heels, for example, many labels simply do not specify the composition of a very low percentage of raw materials, or even labeled as fake fur or other animal fur, cat fur products have long penetrated into the lives of people around the world, but consumers do not know.
The “social stability” slogan behind the stray cats ironically points out the ignored social storm.
The Nightmare Behind Cat Fur
In fact, Ai Weiwei’s studio published the documentary “Three Flowers” as early as 2010, which fully documented the process of stealing, transporting, killing and selling cats, exposing the black industry chain where laws are lacking. “This underground market is not monitored by industry standards, and the dens where cats are caught and hoarded are often hidden inside residential areas, some in rented houses, with many cats crammed into extremely small spaces, spreading epidemics to each other.” Zhang Xiya painfully pointed directly to the public health risks, “Some are engaged in slaughter in dens, what animals, full of offal, fur, blood, lack of sanitation and epidemic prevention treatment, pollution of the surrounding environment, and even some are located next to reservoirs, waste is thrown directly into the reservoir.”
Long Yuanzhi said that cat fur products and industrial chain should not exist, from capture, delivery, centralized retention to slaughter, these processes animal welfare is not met at all, to the delivery process, dozens of cats stuffed in wire cages, and China’s transport time is quite long, from Jilin to Guangdong often spend 19 hours, cat feces and urine fall on the lower level or the same cage animals, easy to spread related epidemics. In addition, it is not uncommon to hear of cat traffickers capturing stray cats by poisoning them, and a few years ago, there were rumors of local officials dying of poisoning from eating cat meat hot pot in Guangdong.
Social unrest ensues, Long Yuan Zhi said, many people already consider cats and dogs as Family, in this case, the capture of stray cats or theft of cats and the making of companion animals into commodities, these actions tend to stimulate social conflicts and cause panic among residents; when consumers see products with suspected cat fur patterns, they should never buy them, while even other furry products are highly likely to come from cats or other fur animals.
When there are meowers in the closet, it means the end of the story of “cat to rich” and the beginning of the human nightmare.
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