It's almost impossible to imagine animal cruelty which trumps Lebanon's abysmal record for abandoning pets and in many cases a more recent brutal practice of shooting dogs at point blank range with a firearm, as reported on in detail in our study in August.

Remarkably, certain European countries aren't so far behind that of Lebanon though.
Recently Animal rights activists drew up a petition to ban the 'barbaric' practice of eating pets in Switzerland, where cat meat often appears on traditional Christmas menus in rural areas.

The news which emerged this week on a number of websites, follows earlier reports that Denmark was planning laws which prevented Danes from actually having sex with their pets.

But now the Swiss are in the media spotlight for eating cats and dogs. On Tuesday of this week, the animal protection group, SOS Chats Noraingue, has handed over a petition with 16,000 signatures, including such notable animal rights defenders as Brigitte Bardot.

Dog meat is often used to make sausage, while cats are prepared around the holiday season in a similar style to rabbit - in a white wine and garlic sauce, according to AFP. A type of mostbröckli made from marinated cat or dog is another local favorite.

Though there are no statistics available on the amount of cat and dog meat consumed by the Swiss, SOS Chats founder and president, Tomi Tomek told AFP she suspects that "around three percent of the Swiss secretly eat cat or dog."

In a 2012 report on pet eating in the Swiss paper Tages Anzeiger, the Swiss Veterinary Office chalked up the practice to a "cultural matter" and noted that some countries breed dogs specifically for slaughter.
One farmer, defending the practice, told the paper, "There's nothing odd about it. Meat is meat. Construction workers in particular like eating it."

This is not the first time that Swiss animal rights defenders have tried altering animal welfare law. The Swiss parliament rejected a bill banning the eating of household pets back in 1993.

Like the Danes, it beggars belief that people need to be regulated by law to either sexually violate pets or eat them. In the case of the Swiss, there is a loophole in the law which allows individuals to do this, although the commercial sale of dog meat is banned nationwide.

It is particularly popular in Lucerne, Appenzell, Jura and in the canton of Bern, according to Tomek. Farmers are free to kill and eat their own animals. Those in the Appenzell and St. Gallen areas are said to favor a beefy breed of dog related to Rottweilers.