{"id":4108,"date":"2023-03-02T09:26:12","date_gmt":"2023-03-02T09:26:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/?p=4108"},"modified":"2023-03-02T09:34:37","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T09:34:37","slug":"revealed-uk-government-planned-exterminating-11-million-cats-in-britain-to-prevent-covid-19-spread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/revealed-uk-government-planned-exterminating-11-million-cats-in-britain-to-prevent-covid-19-spread\/","title":{"rendered":"Revealed: UK Government planned exterminating 11 million cats in Britain to \u2018prevent\u2019 COVID-19 spread"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>A former health minister has admitted that Britain&#8217;s 11 million cats were in the crosshairs at the start of the Covid pandemic, and that the government considered &#8220;exterminating&#8221; them all.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Lord Bethell used the surprising example to highlight the widespread ignorance about how the disease spread when it first appeared in the UK at the beginning of 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said: \u201cThere was a moment we were very unclear about whether domestic pets could transmit the disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn fact, there was an idea at one moment that we might have to ask the public to exterminate all the cats in Britain.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He added: \u201cCan you imagine what would have happened if we had wanted to do that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAnd yet, for a moment there was a bit of evidence around that so that had to be investigated and closed down.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Larry, the feline resident of Number 10, dubbed Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office, was quick to respond, tweeting, &#8220;Hard not to take this personally.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Hard not to take this personally <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/z8QYcATfJw\">https:\/\/t.co\/z8QYcATfJw<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Larry the Cat (@Number10cat) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Number10cat\/status\/1631005182677975045?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">March 1, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>According to a survey conducted by the People&#8217;s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) last year, Britain currently has 11.1 million cats, with 24 percent of the adult population owning one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>&#8220;There is limited evidence to suggest that COVID-19 transmission from people to cats may be possible,&#8221; according to Cats Protection&#8217;s website.<\/p>\n<!-- wpsso rrssb get buttons: buttons on archive option not enabled -->\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A former health minister has admitted that Britain&#8217;s 11 million cats were in the crosshairs at the start of the Covid pandemic, and that the government considered &#8220;exterminating&#8221; them all.&nbsp; &#8230; <\/p>\n<p class=\"read-more-container\"><a title=\"Revealed: UK Government planned exterminating 11 million cats in Britain to \u2018prevent\u2019 COVID-19 spread\" class=\"read-more button\" href=\"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/revealed-uk-government-planned-exterminating-11-million-cats-in-britain-to-prevent-covid-19-spread\/#more-4108\" aria-label=\"More on Revealed: UK Government planned exterminating 11 million cats in Britain to \u2018prevent\u2019 COVID-19 spread\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4113,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[26,16,279,98],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4109,"href":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4108\/revisions\/4109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/savebritain.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}