Monday March 26 7:47 AM ET
Rats Back on the Menu HANOI (Reuters) - Rats are back in season in Vietnam's
Mekong Delta, with tonnes being brought to the market daily by rice farmers
for sale to bars and restaurants.The Tuoi Tre Chu Nhat (Youth Sunday)
Magazine said at least three tonnes of rats were being brought to market
daily in the southern province of Bac Lieu.They are destined to be served up
as rat sour soup, fried rat, curried rat and grilled rat, all popular dishes
in the rice farming Delta, where the rodents are a scourge for crops.Rat meat
is sold at $1.70 per kg for top cuts down to $0.80 for the lowest grade, the
paper said.The report said data from the Bac Lieu Agriculture and Rural
Development Service showed up to 270,000 rats had been caught on 84,000 acres
of rice fields in the province so far this year.It said rat catchers were
managing to earn up to $4 a day.They were disappointed last year when heavy
floods that lasted for months in the Delta nearly wiped out the rat
population, but the phenomenal reproductive rate of the rodents means no
shortage lasts for long.