英文翻訳頼みます!
There are also cat-eating cultures. I heard that there were several cat restaurants in Hanoi, Vietnam, so I went to investigate. They do exist, but barely; the government has banned them. The government said it issued this ban on eating cats because the decrease in the cat population has led to an increase in the rat population. This situation is a threat to community health. It was literally a case of, "When the cat's away, the mice will play." Anyway, that's how popular cat meat is. The government's policy is to enforce the ban until the cat population returns to its original size and can control the rat population.
The reason for eating cats in China is explained with typical Chinese logic. Dragons and tigers are venerated as symbols of strength. Thus, if you can eat one, no power on Earth will be capable of resisting you. The trouble is, drgons are imaginary animals, and cannot be eaten. Tigers were once abundant, but can hardly be found now. So in place of dragons, the Chinese eat snakes, and in place of tigers, they eat cats. This is especially true of the culinary culture in South China.
To return to the news from Melbourne: Australia, a Western society, was flabbergasted by the news that the men had eaten dogs. After all, this is a nation descended from the passionate dog and cat lovers of Britain! At the same time, other Boat People were also astonished. In Vietnam, dogs kept as pets are considered tasteless, and no one would eat them. The dogs the arrested men ate must have been strays. Looked at in that way, you can understand that they felt themselves innocent of any crime.
No one knows what became of the two arrested men afterward. Anyway, it's important to understand that the problem lies in differences of cultures and values. It's the difference between two cultures: one that eats dogs and one that doesn't. But no one can say one side is definitely right and the other is wrong. The problem is not so easy.