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Telegraph (UK) 1/12/04: Beijing's secret civet cat farmer loses his crop to Sars cull

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/12/wcivet12.xml

 

Beijing's secret civet cat farmer loses his crop to Sars cull

By Richard Spencer in Beijing

(Filed: 12/01/2004)

 

As Beijing's only civet cat farmer, Deng may be the unluckiest man in China.

 

His first " crop " is ready to be butchered and

sold to restaurants specialising in " wild food " .

Instead, as China rounds up its civets because of

supposed links to Sars, police have descended on

his animals, quarantining them pending

developments in a scare that at the moment has

just one confirmed and two suspected cases.

 

Mr Deng kept his farm a secret even before the

animal was accused of carrying the virus, which

spread round the world from China last year and

has emerged again in Guangzhou. Civets are

valuable animals, and he was worried about being

burgled.

 

When the cull was announced, because of a study

in Hong Kong that found the coronavirus believed

to cause Sars in civet samples, he went further

underground, operating under the title " Special

Vegetable Farm " .

 

Mr Deng's concern over burglary is now replaced

by a fear for locals' reaction to knowledge that

civets are in their midst. He thought when he

started that there would be a good market for the

animal, whose meat is said to taste a little like

lamb.

 

He allowed the first few litters to grow and

multiply - each breeding female can have up to

three offspring a year - and he now has 298

animals. But then Sars came. " I would have made a

lot of money, " he said.

 

Civet prices are uncertain, but a load of 1,253

in Guangzhou had been bought for 264,000 yuan,

which works out at about £15 each. In

restaurants, where it is served as soup or

braised in soy sauce, it sells for £5 a pound.

Like many farmers, he is sentimental about the

animals he was about to turn into meat.

 

" I love my civets, " he said. " I am sure they are

not responsible for anything bad. It worries me

that I do not know what is going to happen to

them. "

 

 

 

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