The dark history of myths about immigrants eating swans and pets

The Royal Parks and RSPCA have dismissed Nigel Farage’s claim that migrants are killing and eating swans.

The Reform UK leader suggested that swans are being stolen and eaten by “people who come from countries where that’s quite acceptable” in an interview on LBC. He was echoing Donald Trump’s baseless allegation last year that illegal immigrants from Haiti were eating domestic pets in Ohio.

Old legends

Dubious and sensational claims about which animals immigrants eat go back centuries. For instance, the “dog eater” trope is a “fearmongering tactic white politicians have long deployed against immigrants of colour, particularly those of Asian descent”, said The Guardian.

“Racists have long twisted dietary rules to divide people and dehumanise immigrants,” said Cornell University lecturer Adrienne Bitar on The Conversation. “The myth of eating pets traces back to old legends”, including that Asian immigrants in the US were capturing and cooking people’s pets.

In 1883, a Chinese-American journalist offered $500 for proof that Chinese people were eating cats or rats in New York. No one came forward “but that didn’t stop the racist jokes or urban legends”, said Bitar. In 1888, Grover Cleveland’s presidential election campaign team published trading cards featuring cartoons of Chinese men eating rats. In 1971, an “outrageously silly urban legend” that a pet poodle named Rosa was served up at a Hong Kong restaurant, “complete with chilli sauce and bamboo shoots”, was reported by mainstream news organisations, and in 1980, the city of Stockton, in California, was gripped by rumours of Vietnamese families stealing expensive pedigree dogs for food. More recently, in 2016, the Oregon county commissioner and US Senate hopeful Faye Stewart accused Vietnamese refugees of “harvesting” dogs and cats for food.

Corrosive consequences 

The consequences of these sorts of stories can be “serious”, said Bitar. In 2024, a rumour that a Laotian and Thai restaurant in California cooked pit bulls led to “such vile harassment” that the owner moved the restaurant to a new location. Trump’s claim that Haitian immigrants were eating pets made the community the target of bomb threats and forced city buildings and schools to close.

After Trump’s allegation hit the headlines, social media was “flooded” with “AI-generated images” of him holding kittens and ducks and sometimes “carrying them away from Black people giving them chase”, said Slate. “There’s no dog whistle here – the bigotry is open and gleeful.”

The consequences of rumours like Farage’s aren’t “abstract” but “corrosive”, said Alexandra Jones in The Independent, because they “feed prejudice” and “normalise the idea that entire groups can be smeared without proof”. Political discourse itself is degraded because if a party leader can “traffic in tales from the internet’s underbelly, why should anyone else stick to the truth?”