Black cats are being killed in Vietnam to make COVID-19 ‘medicine’

In Vietnam, some locals are turning to unorthodox methods to develop potential coronavirus cures, but shocking footage of their actions have outraged animal rights activists.

Locals have resorted to a particularly gruesome method of treating the coronavirus. Believing that the ground-up bodies of cats could be used to concoct a potential remedy, some people have been skinning and boiling the cats, then turning the animals into paste which is sold as medicine.

Hanoi is believed to be where the majority of the cat-boiling is taking place, but the medicine is being distributed across the country online.

Shocking footage shown on South West News Service showed the dead cats drying in the sun after being killed, as well as a cat being boiled alive.

An image of the COVID-19 medicine made out of boiled cats being sold in Vietnam. Picture: SWNSSource:Supplied

Julia de Cadenet, founder of the No to Dog Meat charity, obtained the footage and was outraged by the barbarity.

People all over the world are understandably terrified of COVID-19, but this does not excuse the horrific cruelty that Vietnamese people are inflicting on these poor cats, she said.

There is no evidence whatsoever that eating cats cures coronavirus, and even if there was, this inhumane treatment is a level of cruelty that is unacceptable even for those who eat meat, de Cadenet continued.

Ironically, the very practice of turning cat paste into medicine has echoes of the kind of unsanitary meat production that may have sparked the coronavirus in the first place, according to the story that COVID-19 originated at a meat market in Wuhan.

The medicine made out of black cats is stirred as it is boiled down. Picture: SWNSSource:Supplied

DeCadenet has warned that unsanitary meat production, including the dog and cat meat trade, could see the global health crisis continue and reoccur if the practice is not stamped out.

China recently banned eating wildlife and formally recognised dogs and cats as pets, not food, but more needs to be done throughout Asia, de Cadenet said.