(Web Desk) - Chinese police intercepted and rescued about 1,000 cats from a truck part of an illicit trade that fraudulently sells cat meat as pork or mutton.
Animal welfare activists in Zhangjiagang had been monitoring the situation after they noticed many cats being held in nailed wooden boxes in a cemetery. On Oct. 12, the activists saw the cats being loaded into a truck, stopped the vehicle, and called the police.
According to state-affiliated news outlet The Paper, the animal rescue uncovered an illegal cat meat trade and raised new concerns about food safety.
If police and the activists had been unable to intercept the truck, the report stated that it was likely that the cats would have been slaughtered and shipped to the South where they would have been falsely sold as pork or lamb skewers and sausages.
The report stated that the plot could have been worth up to $20,500.
“Some people will do all it takes because it is profitable,” Gong Jian, an activist building a sanctuary for stray felines in the Chinese province Jiangsu, told The Paper.
The cats were taken to a shelter. It is unknown if they were strays or pets.
The report has since gone viral on Chinese social media, with many users calling for tighter inspections of the food industry.
One user wrote on the Chinese social media app Weibo, "When will there be laws to protect animals? Don't the lives of cats and dogs matter?"