Activists Are Trying To Stop The Swiss From Eating Cats and Dogs For Christmas

Hundreds of thousands of people in Switzerland apparently eat domestic kittens and puppies’ meat, particularly at Christmas, according to a Swiss animal activist group, who are asking the government to ban the traditional Christmas practice.

The animal protection group, SOS Chats Noirague, which has gathered more than 16,000 signatures for a petition to the Swiss government to stop the practice of eating cats and dogs, confirmed that the populations in many areas are still doing this every year.

PHOTO BY DORA ZETT/SHUTTERSTOCK

The  campaign to  collect signatures included such notable animal rights defenders as Brigitte Bardot, and the groups are looking to get more signatures in order to put them in the hands of the Swiss parliament. The proposal needs 100,000 signatures from of a total population of around 8 million for a national referendum to be held on the issue.

Although the sale of cat and dog meat is banned in Switzerland, it’s still legal to eat your own domestic animals, according to the Food Safety and Veterinary Office. People usually use dog meat to make sausage, while cats are apparently prepared in the same way and best served with white wine and garlic.

The founder and president of the animal rights group SOS CHATS Noiraigue, Tomi Tomek, revealed that 3% of the population still eats cat and dog, she said:

“Around three percent of the Swiss secretly eat cat or dog. You can’t report it to the police because there’s no law against it.”

Tomek also added that 80% of those who eat cats and dogs are farmers. The Lucerne, Appenzell, Jura and Bern areas contain the main culprits. She said:

“It is an old tradition in Switzerland to eat dog meat like sausages and use dog fat for rheumatism. They eat cats because they taste like rabbits. Farmers will eat their cats and dogs when they have too many. I told them to sterilize the animals but they said it was too costly and it made a good meal.”

This is was confirmed by Swiss newspaper Tages Anzeiger in a 2012 report, which reported that the practice persisted in the rural areas of central and eastern Switzerland. Farmers have to kill the cats and dogs themselves, since there are no commercial slaughterhouses which do this!

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Sabina Helfer, spokesperson from Switzerland’s food safety and veterinary commission, claimed that people do eat cats and dogs, but that the figure of 3% seems high. She told The Daily Beast:

“I don’t know where this number has come from but we certainly cannot verify it. It happens, but you cannot call it a habit.”

On the other hand, the Swiss animal rights activist Edith Zellweger said that the number is more likely to represent the people who have consumed cat or dog meat in their lifetime, and it is plausible. She said:

“In almost all rural areas of Switzerland, it is customary to eat cats and dogs. So the number sounds right in my head. We have been condemning the consumption of domestic animals for more than 20 years.”

More information about the Swiss recipe for dried dog meat (Gedörrtes Hundefleisch) can be found in Calvin Schwabe‘s book: Unmentionable Cuisine.

Tomek told the BBC that the Swiss need to take care of this themselves, she said:

“A political leader told us parliament won’t do anything unless people revolt. Presently, we can’t do anything because the law does not forbid people from eating their dog or cat; we can’t even turn in those who engage in this practice. We are asking simply for a paragraph in the law on protecting domestic animals”

The law on trading cat fur was changed after a successful campaign by Tomek last year.

Sources:

(1) The Washington Post

(2) The Daily Beast

(3) News Week

Activists Are Trying To Stop The Swiss From Eating Cats and Dogs For Christmas