Italian TV chef suspended over "cat stew" remarks

Italian state TV has suspended a cooking show host who shocked the nation by saying cat stew is a Tuscan delicacy he swears he has enjoyed many times.
RAI TV confirmed on Wednesday that it had suspended Beppe
Bigazzi, the 77-year-old host of a popular morning program that
offers food tips and recipes in a country fiercely proud of its cuisine.
When his 27-year-old female co-host looked stunned as Bigazzi
said he has eaten cat stew “many times,” the white-haired,
grandfather figure defended his tastes.
“Why, people maybe don’t eat rabbit, chicken, pigeon?” Bigazzi
said. He could have added horse meat, which many butchers and
supermarket meat departments stock.
“Who’s not fat, kills the cat,” is how Bigazzi began his
lighthearted prattle about cat stew.
Bigazzi claimed cat stew was a Tuscan specialty near the Arno
river valley, but co-host Elisa Isoardi looked so embarrassed she
ducked behind a cart of fresh salad greens whose healthy virtues
the two were supposed to be chatting about.
“Cat, soaked for three days in the running water of a stream”
in Tuscany “comes out with its meat white, and I assure you — I
have eaten it many times — that it is a delicacy,” Bigazzi
continued.
His critics included Health Ministry Undersecretary Francesca
Martini.
“Cats are pets protected by law,” Martini noted, specifically
against “cruelty, maltreatment and abandonment.”
She lamented in a statement issued by the Health Ministry that
Bigazzi’s advocating cat stew “hurts sensibility, which is
fortunately steadily growing, of citizens toward animals.”
The director of the RAI channel the show runs on, Mauro Mazza,
called the decision to suspend Bigazzi for an unspecified amount of
time as “painful but inevitable.”
Only a few moments after revealing his startling recipe, Bigazzi
seemed to anticipate he would be barraged with criticism. “Now
there will be letters from nature lovers. Why don’t they defend
rabbits?” he asked.
By Wednesday, two days after the showed was broadcast, the
YouTube video clip had recorded more than 55,000 hits, and more
than 800 comments registered.