Paper short abstract:

Covid19 has abruptly brought more attention to the commercialization and consumption of wild animals and stressed some discrepancies between culinary folk's traditions, and contemporary controversies in selective food memory. The paper aims at comparing scandalous culinary views in Italy and China.

Paper long abstract:

Right after the start of the Covid19 pandemic, the governor of Italian Veneto Region went on national television to blame Chinese people, stating that “we all saw them eating live rats”, prompting a stark response from Chinese Government officials. Right after this faux pas, Italian social media showed pictures of ready to eat sun-dried rats in postwar Veneto, a region where the city Vicenza is known for its eating cats' culinary history.

Meanwhile, in China, the Government drafted a new legislative decision on the consumption of wild animals, after the shut-down of the Wuhan biggest wet market, the first stage of Covid-19, trying to cope with national and international critics. However, it seems that dog meat has long been part of folks' culinary culture in China, with a saying stating that: even Gods can’t stand the delicacy of dog meat.

In recent years, a popular Italian tv cooking show had to fire one of its most known hosts because he talked about cooking cats. However, ancient cookbooks dating back to the 16th century show that cat recipes were popular among the élites.

Those controversies tell us a lot not only about the selective memory of food heritage, especially the passage from scarcity to abundance and the taboo it triggers regarding the past; but it is also useful to understand mainstream speciesism and the commoditization and “pet-ification”.

Through a comparative approach and a selection of case studies, this presentation aims at discussing different approaches on those subjects in Italy and China.