http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...mbodia_rats_dc
Rats on Menu as Bird Flu Leaves Fowl Aftertaste

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) - Bird flu may have decimated poultry businesses across Asia, but rat dealers have never had it so good.



"I've got a constant stream of customers," Van Vath, a rat butcher in the western Cambodian town of Battambang, told Wednesday's edition of Cambodge Soir.


With customers shying away from chicken for fear of catching the deadly flu virus that has killed millions of birds and at least 20 people, she has been selling more than 400 pounds of rodent meat every morning -- twice her normal turnover.


In far-flung corners of the jungle-clad and impoverished Southeast Asian nation, rat -- fried, grilled or roasted with garlic and vegetables -- is a highly prized delicacy.


It is not the only ingredient to be found scuttling on the rural Cambodian menu.


Spiders, water beetles, crickets, snakes, frogs and ants are all choice treats, with local tradition saying they were first eaten by starving peasants during the Khmer Rouge (news - web sites) genocide in the 1970s.

A few years ago I worked with a guy who came here from Cambodia when he was 10. I liked hearing his stories about his youth there. He once described to me, in detail, the process of rendering the fat from a rat to make a tasty soup.

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Ratties

This reminds me of a film "King Rat", which was about American and British POW's in WWII. This one American GI and his British buddies were raising rats to sell the meat to the other POW's. These were less than honorable men, but they actually saved alot of lives by making rat meat available to the other POW's.

This is an old B&W film, a classic and I really recommend it.