Chinese restaurant ‘caught serving street pigeons as roasted duck’

Street pigeons were found plucked of their feathers (Picture: Madrid Police)

Police in Spain have shuttered a Chinese restaurant in central Madrid after discovering they had been serving street pigeons as ‘roasted duck’.

Madrid Municipal Police raided the restaurant, located in the Usera district of the city, on March 25 and discovered serious health code violations.

Unlabelled meat and fish, cockroaches in the kitchen, rat traps on the floor and street pigeons plucked of their feathers were found in the eatery.

A door which led to a secret storage room was hidden behind a shelf in the disabled toilet was also discovered – and not listed on the business license.

Officers found eight freezers with meat and fish that were unlabelled, untraceable and with no use by dates on them.

There were no also thermometers to measure the temperatures of storage areas – which is required in most restaurant codes.

The restaurant was ordered to close and the owner is being investigated for alleged crimes against public health.

The eatery was unclean and had rat traps on the floor (Picture: Madrid Police) Eight freezers with unlabelled meat and fish were found (Picture: Madrid Police)

Other local reports cited 300 kilos of ‘rotten food’, along with meat hanging to dry on a clothesline.

It’s believed the restaurant staff hunted pigeons in the street, before ‘kicking them to death’, El Mundo reported.

‘Everything smelled of rotten seafood; it was almost unbearable,’ one officer said.

One resident of the building where the eatery was told El Mundo: ‘None of us ate there. 

‘It smelled bad, and we saw food brought in on a cart and left at the door in broad daylight.’

Police are looking to charge the owner with animal cruelty, crimes against public health, and consumer rights.

The restaurant has been told to close for crimes against public health (Picture: Madrid Police) Plastic jars appeared to contain other items (Picture: Madrid)

Another restaurant in Vietnam was shut down for good after drowning up to 300 cats a month to supply the country’s feline meat trade.

Pham Quoc Doanh, 37, ran the Gia Bảo restaurant in the Thịnh Đán ward of Thái Nguyên, the capital of the northeast province of the same name, for five years.

‘Specialty cat meat,’ the sign outside the eatery on Quang Trung Street once read, with a photograph of a wide-eyed black cat in the top-right corner.

Eating cats is relatively common in Vietnam, where the decade-old appetite for felines has seen their meat be considered an aphrodisiac, lucky charm and even a health-boosting superfood that combats Covid-19.

Doanh never wanted to sell cat meat. He never wanted to run a slaughterhouse drowning the animals to keep his diners’ bellies full, adding to the one million cats, mainly strays and stolen pets, killed for their meat a year in Vietnam.

‘Before selling cat meat at this restaurant I served other normal food and drinks,’ the father-of-two told Metro in 2023.

‘However, the income was not enough to cover the living cost of my family. It was then I tried selling cat meat since there was no other available restaurant serving this in the area.’

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