China officials deny flood rats on the menu

BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese officials have denied media reports that truckloads of live rats rounded up near a flooded lake in eastern China were ending up in local markets and on restaurant menus in the south.

Newspapers reported that rats had been selling fast over the last two weeks in Guangzhou, capital of the southern province of Guangdong, coinciding with a 2 billion strong plague of rats fleeing rising waters in Dongting Lake in eastern Hunan province.

Since late June, local governments in Hunan have been grappling to contain the marauding rats which had destroyed 1.6 million hectares (6,200 sq miles) of cropland and stoked fears of disease.

He Huaxian, a disease control official in Hunan's plague-afflicted Yueyang county, denied a report in Information Times which said that trucks loaded with live rats from Hunan were headed for a local Guangzhou market, the China Daily reported on Tuesday.

"It is difficult to catch rats alive, and it is even more difficult to catch them alive in such great numbers," the paper quoted He as saying.

Wang Fan, a Guangzhou food safety official, also denied the report and said an inspection of a local market had found no evidence of rats for sale.

"The city government of Guangzhou has not lifted the ban against the trading and eating of wild animals, including rats," the paper quoted Wang as saying.

Rats are considered a delicacy in Guangzhou, where people are reputed to eat anything that moves, but their sale was banned in 2003 as part of a general prohibition on wild animal consumption in the wake of the SARS epidemic.

"SUPER RAT RACE"