Bardot blasts China over civet cat slaughter

French film legend and animal rights campaigner Brigitte Bardot has sent a letter to China’s president urging him to end a policy of killing civet cats in the country‘s fight against SARS.

The letter to President Hu Jintao, dated Wednesday, lashes out at China’s “cruel and barbarous slaughtering methods” of animals and claims there is no scientific proof about which animal species first caught the severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, virus.

“The eradication methods these animals are put through are unacceptable,” Bardot said in her open letter, written in English and made available to reporters yesterday.

The southern Chinese province of Guangdong has targeted 10,000 civets for slaughter – by drowning, electrocution or incineration – by tomorrow as part of its battle against the spread of the virus.

“Mr President, I hope to believe that you will substitute these current slaughter methods for methods that are worthy of your legendary refinement,” Bardot’s letter said.

The mass slaughter stems from the suspected link between wild animals and the virus, which killed 774 people worldwide last year. Health officials declared China’s first SARS patient of the season, a 32-year-old TV producer from Guangzhou, had recovered on Tuesday after contracting the illness in mid-December.

Researchers have discovered similarities between a virus found in the civet - a weasel-like animal prized as a delicacy – and in Guangzhou’s SARS patient.

Bardot, 69, is no stranger to using her celebrity status for feisty campaigns to defend animals. In 1997 and 2000, she was convicted in France of inciting racial violence after she criticised in print the Muslim practice of slaughtering sheep.