Italian TV celeb sacked for giving cat stew recipe
Beppe Bigazzi upsets animal lovers by saying cat is ‘better than chicken or rabbit’
An Italian TV celebrity has caused outrage, and been dropped from his show, after he gave viewers a recipe for stewed cat. Beppe Bigazzi, a 77-year-old consumer affairs journalist, cookery writer and panelist for 10 years on La Prova del Cuoco, the Italian version of Ready Steady Cook, said cat was: "Better than chicken, rabbit or pigeon."
The white-haired and perma-tanned presenter refused to apologise to viewers after he was urged to make amends during the commercial break, while TV channel RAI's switchboards were immediately jammed with callers complaining, and animal rights groups issued protesting statements.
Bigazzi's gaffe was made during a discussion of how cat had been eaten in lean times after the Second World War. He claimed that far from being a last-resort meal, boiled cat - or gatto in umido - was one of the "great dishes" of his native Valdarno region in Tuscany. Cat meat should be soaked in spring water for three days before being eaten, he said, adding: "What comes out is a delicacy. Many a time I've eaten its white meat."
The head of the Italian society for the protection of animals said that killing cats was illegal, and a junior government minister called for a criminal investigation on the grounds of incitement to mistreat animals, saying it was "absolutely unheard of for a public service broadcaster to tell people how delicious cats are to eat".
Meanwhile, Bigazzi tried to back-pedal – though not, perhaps, wholeheartedly. He claimed he had been only joking, but added: "Mind you, I wasn't joking all that much. In the 1930s and 1940s, when I was a boy, people certainly did eat cat in the countryside around Arezzo."
And there may be some truth in his claims: inhabitants of the northern city of Vincenza are known as 'cat-eaters' ('magnagati'), while some Italian butchers sell rabbits with their heads left on so customers can be sure they’re not buying felines. ·






















