Rat Meat 'Too Pricey' For Poor

You may think of them as squalid vermin - but a slice of rat meat in Cambodia has quadrupled in price.

Rat meat is prepared for sale at a Cambodian market

Soaring inflation and increased popularity is putting the normally affordable meat beyond the reach of the country's poor.

A kilogram of the protein-rich flesh would cost you 5,000 riel in Cambodia, or about 70p. That is up from 1,200 riel last year.

Spicy field rat dishes, with a touch of garlic, have become particularly popular at a time when beef costs 20,000 riel per kilo.

The rats have also become easier to catch as they flee to higher ground from flooded areas of the lower Mekong Delta.

But soaring prices is not bad news for everyone.

"Many children are happy making some money from selling the animals to the markets, but they keep some for their family," agriculture official Ly Marong said.

"Not only are our poor eating it, but there is also demand from Vietnamese living on the border with us."

He estimated that Cambodia supplies more than a tonne of live rats a day to Vietnam.

In August, a welfare minister in India suggested that the Bihar state set up rat farms and rat meat centres to beat global food prices.