Authorities in Ho Chi Minh City have arrested twelve men accused of running a sprawling operation that stole thousands of cats from neighborhoods across the city and sold them for meat, according to Vietnamese state media reports.
Police named 39-year-old Luu Thanh Binh as the suspected ringleader of the network. He and the eleven other detained men are under investigation on theft charges, state media said Monday.
According to investigators, Binh's role centered on buying cats that had already been stolen, housing the animals at a facility in the northern part of the city, and then reselling them to buyers in the meat trade. He allegedly relied on a network of suppliers who, in turn, recruited still more people to carry out the actual thefts.
Those recruits reportedly worked under cover of darkness, riding motorcycles through residential streets between 11 p.m. and 4 a.m. in search of cats. Investigators said each person involved in the nighttime prowling could trap anywhere from four to ten cats in a single night.
The scale of the alleged operation was significant. The suspects told investigators they had stolen and sold roughly 2,700 cats in total, according to the state media accounts. Police did not specify how long the network had been in operation before it was shut down.
The case came to light after officers raided the network on July 8. During the operation, authorities discovered approximately 50 cats and dozens of traps, state media reported.
Of the cats seized in the raid, thirteen were eventually returned to their owners. A nonprofit animal rights group took responsibility for caring for the remaining animals while authorities worked to determine who they belonged to.
The arrests highlight a practice that, while not unique to Vietnam, has become increasingly contentious in the country. The consumption of dog and cat meat is not uncommon in parts of Asia, though it is far from a mainstream practice. In Vietnam, cat meat has traditionally been eaten more often in the northern regions and tends to be associated with older generations.
That tradition has been fading, however, as pet ownership has grown and urbanization has reshaped the country's social norms. Younger Vietnamese are considerably more likely to view dogs and cats as companion animals rather than as sources of food, a shift that has put pressure on the meat trade.
Public opposition to the trade has also been building. In 2024, more than 250,000 people signed a petition demanding an end to Vietnam's dog and cat meat trade, a sign of the growing animal welfare movement in the country. The central city of Hoi An had already made a pledge in 2021 to end the sale and consumption of dog and cat meat within its boundaries.
Some people who consume cat meat believe the practice brings good luck, though there is no scientific evidence to support that belief.
Legally, dogs and cats in Vietnam are classified as private property, which means stealing them can be prosecuted as theft. Criminal prosecution generally applies when the value of the stolen property exceeds 2 million dong, a threshold that the alleged scale of this operation would easily surpass.
The case also raises practical challenges for authorities. Identifying the owners of recovered animals can be difficult in a country where pet registration is not universal, and the nonprofit caring for the confiscated cats will need to hold them until ownership can be established.
For residents of the affected neighborhoods, the arrests may bring some relief after months of reports about animals vanishing at night. The pattern described by investigators — thieves on motorbikes sweeping through streets in the early morning hours — matches the kind of complaint that has circulated in Vietnamese cities as the pet population has grown.
The investigation remains ongoing, and police have not announced any additional arrests or charges beyond those already filed. Under Vietnamese law, the twelve men are presumed innocent until proven otherwise in court.
The case has drawn attention beyond Vietnam's borders in part because of its sheer scale: an alleged citywide network, a holding facility, and thousands of animals funneled into the meat trade. It also underscores the tension between a longstanding if minority culinary tradition and a rapidly changing society in which cats are increasingly regarded as members of the family rather than as livestock.
How the prosecution proceeds could serve as a test of how seriously Vietnamese authorities are willing to treat animal theft as the country's attitudes toward pets continue to evolve.
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