From time to time on the Internet you can come across materials that in Switzerland, located in the heart of Europe, they systematically eat rather exotic meat - cat. We checked if this is true.

This is what the channel says "NTV": “In civilized and prosperous Switzerland, cat dishes are still served on the Christmas table in memory of hungry times. Chef Maurits Brunno from Switzerland spends a long time describing the taste of what he calls tender cat meat. And he doesn’t see anything wrong with it.

According to a local animal protection organization, in Switzerland, 3% of the population, or about 250,000 people, periodically practice something similar. Attempts by activists to legally ban eating cats have ended in failure for several years.”

Website BigPikcha.ru clarifies that we are talking about 200 kg of meat consumed per year. And here is the resource "Faktrum", without denying the Swiss love for cat meat, focuses on dog meat - supposedly this is what 3% of the country's population regularly eats. Some resources claim, that 3% is both types of meat combined.

Debates about unusual culinary preferences have a long history in Switzerland. For example, in 2013, the authoritative Zurich newspaper Tages-Anzeiger published a polemical article on the morality of consuming cat and dog meat. The newspaper also cited quotes from several interviews, the participants of which admitted that they sometimes enjoy preparing dog meat stew or cat meat cutlets. “There’s nothing weird about eating dog. It tastes just like any other meat, and in any case no one knows what he is eating,” another newspaper quotes, Le Matin, one of the Swiss farmers.

However, in this case there is not only evidence, but also steps in the legal field. Indeed, Swiss animal rights activists periodically draw up petitions calling on the government to ban people from eating pet meat. In 1993, a similar initiative collected 6000 signatures and was sent to the federal authorities in Bern. However, the Swiss parliament came to the conclusion that people's culinary habits should not be regulated by special laws. However, many regions of Switzerland then introduced a ban on the official sale of cat and dog meat in greengrocers and restaurants.

In 2013 and 2014, similar petitions were already collected 7000 And 16,000 signatures accordingly are scanty figures for Switzerland with a population of 8 million. Perhaps it is because of this that to this day there is no law in Switzerland that would prohibit cooking and eating your own cat or dog. You can only be held accountable for killing your animal in Switzerland if it was committed in a cruel manner. According to information According to the Swiss Veterinary and Food Safety Authority, the sale of cat and dog meat is prohibited, but eating your own animals is not against the law.

There are other facts that indirectly prove that the above problem exists in Switzerland. So, according to According to the Swiss Veterinary Control Center (Schweizerische Tiermeldezentrale), between 10,000 and 20,000 pets disappear every year in Switzerland, 80% of them are cats.

It is also impossible to completely refute the statistics on the popularity of meat from cats and dogs in Switzerland, which are cited by some Russian websites. After all, it can also be found on authoritative resources (for example, BBC), and one of the primary sources of data is the founder and president of a local animal welfare group SOS Chats Noiraigue Tomi Tomek. Indeed, according to her, about 3% of the Swiss are secretly addicted to such dishes. She confirms that the cat is included in the traditional Christmas menu in some areas of Switzerland, and even names specific cantons: Lucerne, Appenzell, Jura and Bern. Dog meat, according to her, is mainly used to make sausages and fatty remedies for rheumatism. In addition, a popular ointment for rheumatism is made from the fat of these animals. In the 2010s, through the efforts of the organization, they managed to achieve a ban on the sale of cat skins. Information about 250,000 Swiss people periodically eating cats or dogs is also given by The Times. However, since the official statistics There is no similar volume of meat consumption in Switzerland for cat or dog meat, we can only state the main fact: yes, in Switzerland, meat from both types of animals enjoys a certain, although not precisely measured, popularity.