Rats Good Business for Cambodians, Food for Vietnamese

Koh Thom district, Kandal province – On a quiet stretch of road in this sleepy border town, there are some telltale signs of an unusual trade: A trail of discarded dead rats, some upturned with their paws stiff in the air, others covered with a thick layer of feasting flies. These are the ones that didn’t make it. The lull is disrupted by a motorbike that clatters past, its furry cargo of rats squished into two cages topped with leaves to keep the sun off. Most of the rodents are stunned from the bumpy journey from Kandal province’s Sa’ang district’s Kraing Yov commune, though middlemen and trucks laden with tons of rats come from as far as Kompong Thom and Siem Reap provinces. The rats’ ultimate destination is Vietnam, where demand for their meat is high. The night before, the rodents had walked unwittingly into traps laid down in paddy fields by villagers. Middleman Kok Orn, 52, picks them up every morning before bringing them to Chrey Thom village in Sampov Puon commune, the major conduit for the rat trade, where they are weighed and sold on by a family of rat traders. This year, he’s paying villagers 4,500 riel, or about $1.10, per kg of rats and selling them on for 5,400 riel per kg. The price has been driven upward by a depletion in their numbers—last year, he was bringing about 800 kg per day to the town, where they would be sold for 4,500 riel. …