From the deeply weird files, Associated Press reports a Utah man faces an animal cruelty charge after a Facebook video surfaced showing him eating what appeared to be a live baby rat.

Thirty-one-year-old Andy Ray Harris of Tooele was charged with the misdemeanor in April after authorities viewed the video.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals reported it to police.

The video shows a man putting what appears to be a tiny, hairless rat in his mouth, chewing it up and swallowing it.

Harris has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
 

Depends on the state, according to Brian Palmer of Slate Magazine.

When police in Western New York pulled over Gary Korkuc for blowing off a stop sign on Sunday, they found a live cat in his trunk, covered in cooking oil, peppers, and salt. Korkuc told authorities that his pet feline was "possessive, greedy, and wasteful" and that he intended to cook and eat it. Korkuc has been charged with animal cruelty. …

Few states have specific laws barring the use of pets for food. The ones that do typically ban the slaughter or sale of dog and cat meat. The state of New York expressly prohibits "any person to slaughter or butcher domesticated dog (canis familiaris) or domesticated cat (felis catus or domesticus) to create food, meat or meat products for human or animal consumption." It's not clear whether the eating itself is outlawed or only the butchery. If you managed to buy dog or cat flesh from someone else who broke the anti-slaughter law, you might be OK. The law also doesn't cover ferrets, gerbils, parakeets, or other less familiar pet species. (Although the general anti-cruelty law might protect exotics.)

California's anti-pet-eating law has a broader reach. It bars possession of the carcass, so having bought your cat steaks from someone else wouldn't be a useful alibi. The California law also protects "any animal traditionally or commonly kept as a pet or companion," rather than just Fido and Fluffy. The statute is somewhat untested, though, so no one really knows which animals are included.

Pigs are not, even though they are commonly kept as pets, because they are farm animals. Horses are specifically covered by a different section of the code. There's no precedent on iguanas, goldfish, or boa constrictors. …

Authorities won't have any trouble prosecuting Korkuc, the Western New Yorker who was marinating his cat in the trunk. Whether or not he really intended to eat his feline, keeping a companion animal in a motor vehicle without proper ventilation is illegal. Rubbing the cat with chili-infused oil, while not specifically addressed, is also a violation of the state's general cruelty law, which prohibits torture.
 

Consumers, when dining at a food establishment, or opening some food at home, and discovering a foreign object, or something gross, or a cockroach, do not turn the evidence over to the restaurant or the retailer. Call the local health unit. Otherwise, the proof may be gone (at least take a picture with your cell phone, but they can be photoshoped too easily).

Huang Xiaogang and friends were having their meal at a restaurant in Caidian of Wuhan province recently in China.

Huang found a black creature in the bowl of mushrooms and picked it up with his chopsticks.

To his surprise that tiny black thing was a dead cockroach and complained to the restaurant manager, reports the Daily Chilli.

The manager said that the insect had been "sterilised in high temperature" and was not dirty anymore.

Assuring Huang that the insect would not cause any harm to their health, he picked it up and swallowed it.

The manager later told health officers that he was afraid that the customers would demand high compensation that is why he swallowed the cockroach to destroy evidence.

He then waived off Huang's bill of 570 Yuan.