DINNER TIME: Tigers, apparently unsatisfied with their steady diet of chickens, eagerly await the imminent arrival of something meatier (THOMAS RIPPE)

It was over in 4 seconds. Before anyone could quite comprehend what had happened, it struggled, it fell, it flew and they leaped, almost in unison, a whirling, growling mass of orange stripes and gleaming white fangs. The symphony of snarls rose to a pitch. There was a sudden plaintive bleat and a final wrenching snap. The sound then fell to a low mechanical growl as a scrum of 10-foot felines fought over the scraps.

Those of us who witnessed the scene were left in stunned silence, flickers of remorse on faces still gleaming with adrenalin and elation.

We had transgressed, we had abandoned the mores of modern carbon footprint conscious civilization; we had just fed a live goat to a pack of Siberian tigers.

This was no dream sequence but a Tuesday morning in China's freezing far north.

Weeks earlier, we were informed that a tiger sanctuary in Harbin afforded visitors the primal privilege of flinging unfortunate creatures, specifically goats, to the world's largest cats. But we initially dismissed this information as scarcely credible.

While the world abounds with dubious zoological gardens and sanctuaries the previous highlight of my morally questionable animal encounters was feeding a chicken to a half starved reptile at a Thai crocodile farm.

In fact, China is actually home to the world's largest population of tigers. India's tiger reserves, Bangladesh's Sunderbans, Borneo and Sumatra actually house fewer of the great cats than the Middle Kingdom.

This might seem hard to believe given the generally poor state of China's natural environment but of course the tigers aren't wild, rather they are captive remnants from an interesting Chinese scheme: tiger farms.

It is well known that the use of various parts of a tiger's anatomy in traditional Chinese medicine is one of the principal causes for the decline of the creatures in the wild. But what is less well known is that in the 1980s China trialed a novel solution to the tiger trade problem—raising tigers in farms.

The cats breed easily in captivity and farms, the logic went, would eliminate the need for poaching wild specimens. This seemed a sensible scheme. But the idea that everyone's favorite furry felines were being battery-farmed didn't go down too well in the West and under growing pressure, the tiger trade was officially banned in China in 1993.

In a bid to stave off bankruptcy, the country's dozen or so tiger farms then performed rather radical policy reversals, re-branded themselves as tiger sanctuaries, and found that living tigers could be just as lucrative as dead ones.

It brings us to the Harbin Songhua Siberian Tiger Reserve where 90 yuan ($14.17) gets you a tour, in a reinforced bus, through vast pens of freely roaming tigers.

High metal gates, towering double fences, an abundance of razor wire and enormous predators that prowl to within an inch of your vehicle; the experience is as close as you can get to Jurassic Park without the aid of Hollywood.

The tigers saunter through a reasonably natural environment: There are dense thickets of foliage, mature trees, and occasional piles of snow.

During the 30-minute tour we got to see the great cats lounging, roaming, mating, playing, fighting and even spraying our bus with pungent liquid from dubiously placed scent glands—the one thing they didn't seem to be doing however, was eating.

As the tour came to an end there was no sign of the carnage we had been told to expect. No dismembered carcasses, no thrilling chases, the rumors of feedings it seemed had indeed been exaggerated.

But just as we were about to reconcile ourselves to a carnage-free tiger tour we were piled out of our bus and marched through a grim warren of raised concrete until we reached the reserve's piece de resistance; a sunken, circular pit somewhat larger than a tennis court, where we could observe two dozen especially large, hungry-looking tigers from a barely elevated platform.

The scent of death and the leftovers from half a dozen previous meals made the purpose of the place immediately apparent. In the corner of this big cat cauldron an old woman vendor stood next to a sign advertising chickens 60 yuan ($9.45), turkeys 120 yuan ($18.90).

We saw the birds disappear in momentary puffs of feathers and blood but we wanted more. We wanted a goat, and after the obligatory haggling a price was fixed. A few minutes later the arena's predatory funk was pierced by a single bleat; a lamb snow white, and hardly larger than a spaniel, was quite literally being led to slaughter.

Dragged through the concrete corridor, reeling at the smell of so many snarling predators our offering to the gods of pure wanton amusement was given a momentary reprieve as tasteless photographs were snapped. The goat was then hoisted up to an undersized hatch... poised above a pack of smacked lips and snapping jaws and then....

It was over in 4 seconds.

The author is a Sri Lankan living in Beijing

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