They are big rats!
Originally Posted by
QF WP 
A unique harvest is under way in the rice fields of Cambodia, where tens of thousands of wild rats are being trapped alive each day to feed a growing export market for the meat of rural rodents.
BBC News - Cambodian rat meat: A growing export market
I think this is the best of the story - taken from the "rat's mouth" so to say (the rat catchers who knows all about their product):
On a good night, he can catch up to 25kg of rats.
"After the harvest season the rats don't have much food to eat, so it is a good time to catch them," he said, unloading his motorcycle of several large, steel cages filled with rats at the home of the local rat trader.
Though rat meat tastes "a bit like pork," Mr Chhim said it was not really his preferred meal.
"We sell the rats for money and buy fish instead," said Chin Chon, 36, another rat catcher as he dropped off several more packed cages to be weighed, graded and repacked for export.
A bit like a now closed-down well-known cheap & cheerful Asian restaurant in Kingsford near to UNSW. Always packed at lunch and dinner with students and locals due to the slightly larger serves they gave than their competitors.
Luckily I never ate there - something just didn't seem right when I saw a friend's take-away chicken rice noodles. The chicken was not in lumps but virtually shredded with no pieces more than roughly an inch or 2.54cm long. The Asian food place in the UNSW Roundhouse was around 50 cents to $1 more depending on the dish but you literally got chunks you could get your teeth into vs this that looked more destined for between your teeth.
One instance where being choosy about food REALLY paid off.
Raided multiple times and fined. The first time they appealed to the student newspaper and got a story that the other shops were jealous of their success etc etc.
Over this same time period there were several articles in the SMH about the 'disappearing pigeons' from Town Hall. Many letters about where they could be going....
If only people knew....
Yes, each time this restaurant got raided they found its two commercial freezers were stacked full of pigeons and they never had the receipts and could not name the supplier. But pigeon was not on the menu, chicken was and so was pork (
see the link to the rat story??). This was only revealed to the public after the third raid and the student newspaper wrote it up (never pays to lie to and get caught out by uni students with free legal service and no assets).
Graphic full front page photo (now how did they get that...) of one of the freezers with its lid open {if you are really desperate to get an idea of what it looked like then read the BBC article and scroll down to the two women working}.
After the third prosecution in about 18 months the place shut down. Seems uni students stopped going there. Don't know whether they were finally refused a food license (doubt it) or the lack of customers (the power of the media) did it.
It is amazing how many ways you can work the word "pigeon" into a conversation while you're at uni - I 'dined' out on my not eating there vs my friends for over a year. And yes, I got to pick where we'd eat for the next two years.
