Indian State Recommends Eating Rats

Adding rodents to menu pushed as solution to food crisis
By Nick McMaster,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 18, 2008 12:47 PM CDT
Indian State Recommends Eating Rats
Indian laborers rest at a wholesale market in Allahabad, India, Sunday, April 27, 2008.    (AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)

Faced with high food prices and ebbing grain reserves, officials in the Indian state of Bihar have endorsed the consumption of rats, Reuters reports. The state government sees the strategy as a way to reduce the pest population as well as curb the demand for grain, and has even proposed that restaurants start offering the rodents.

"Eating of rats will serve twin purposes—it will save grains from being eaten away by rats and will simultaneously increase our grain stock," said Vijay Prakash, an official from Bihar's welfare department. (More India stories.)

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