The Price of Rat Meat has Quadrupled in Cambodia
August 28th, 2008Via: Reuters:
The price of rat meat has quadrupled in Cambodia this year as inflation has put other meat beyond the reach of poor people, officials said on Wednesday.
With consumer price inflation at 37 percent according to the latest central bank estimate, demand has pushed a kilogram of rat meat up to around 5,000 riel (69 pence) from 1,200 riel last year.
Spicy field rat dishes with garlic thrown in have become particularly popular at a time when beef costs 20,000 riel a kg.
Officials said rats were fleeing to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong Delta, making it easier for villagers to catch them.
“Many children are happy making some money from selling the animals to the markets, but they keep some for their family,” Ly Marong, an agriculture official, said by telephone from the Koh Thom district on the border with Vietnam.
“Not only are our poor eating it, but there is also demand from Vietnamese living on the border with us.”
He estimated that Cambodia supplied more than a tonne of live rats a day to Vietnam.
Rats are also eaten widely in Thailand, while a state government in eastern India this month encouraged its people to eat.
3 Responses to “The Price of Rat Meat has Quadrupled in Cambodia”
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August 28th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
I guess this means cats and dogs are now strictly a luxury food.
August 28th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
If you get the chance, read a book called Zone 22 by Tig Hague (in the USA the book might be called “Tomorrow You Go Home”). It’s his experience in a Russian prison camp in the past few years, where he was incarcerated for arriving at Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport with a tiny piece of hash in his jeans. Everyone in the prison was emaciated except for the southeast Asians who were dining on rat regularly… And the occasional dog when they bribed the guards for one.
August 29th, 2008 at 7:42 am
It probably tastes like chicken. har.