Snakes or animal male organs: What did Chinese group in Egypt barbecue?

CAIRO - 26 March 2020: The Egyptian security forces received reports that a group of Chinese people were barbecuing snakes in a rented villa in Madinaty, northeast Cairo, on Wednesday evening.

According to a statement from the Egyptian Ministry of Interior, the Chinese group, including two women, have been arrested and interrogated by the police for the complaint.

The five-member group was tested for coronavirus after it has been revealed that the two women’s health was deteriorating, and the villa has been sanitized.

The Chinese Embassy in Cairo was also notified to send a representative to attend the interrogation procedures, the statement added.

As per the initial investigations, one of the two women, who rented the villa, said that what was barbecued were not snakes at all but animal male organs. She added that she bought them from an Egyptian slaughterhouse and wanted to prepare them for her Chinese friends.

The following video shows the confiscated barbecue meat


During the investigations, samples of the seized meat were sent to Cairo’s Veterinary Medicine Directorate to check it.

Later, Head of the Veterinary Medicine Directorate Sayed Eibeid told “9 PM” talk show on Wednesday that the barbecued meat is the male organs of calves and pigs.

In other comments to Youm7, Eibeid said that the animal male organs are being used as sexual therapy and are eaten normally in Egypt.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus (COVID-2019) late December in the Chinese city of Wuhan, Chinese people’s food habits have been blamed for the virus outbreak especially after unconfirmed reports stated that the Chinese bat soup might have been the source of the virus.

The virus was announced as pandemic by the International Health Organization on March 10, 2020. As yet, the global infected cases of the virus reached 488,397 people and 22,067 deaths were reported, while the recovered cases rose to 117,607.