Feb. 2, 2007 — A German breeder believes he has the answer to North Korea's hunger problems: his giant bunnies that can grow to as big as 23 pounds.
Karl Szmolinsky has raised the German Giants — gray rabbits the size of cocker spaniels — for 44 years at his home in Eberswalde, northeast of Berlin.
After winning the biggest bunny prize a year ago at a state fair — for a 23.2-pound, 29-inch-long gray giant — the retired chauffeur received an unexpected call from the regional farmers' federation.
North Korea, apparently, was interested in his rabbits as a possible solution for its hunger-stricken population of 23 million.
The secretive regime of communist leader Kim Jong Il has relied on foreign food aid since natural disasters and mismanagement devastated its economy in the mid-1990s and led to a famine estimated to have killed 2 million people.
Diplomats from the North Korean Embassy in Berlin drove out to Eberswalde to see the big bunnies for themselves.
"They came here and they checked out the rabbits," Szmolinsky, 67, told The Associated Press. "They really liked them."
A woman answering the telephone at the North Korean Embassy in Berlin said she could not comment.
Szmolinsky sold them four females and two males to start a pilot program, and he plans to fly to Pyongyang, the capital of the communist nation, in April at their request to see how things are progressing.
Females produce two litters of eight to 14 offspring each year, so the four alone could produce as many as 112 rabbits in the first year alone. At that rate, it would not take long to make an impact, especially because a single rabbit produces some 15 pounds of meat.
"They're really good for their hunger problem," Szmolinsky said.
Szmolinsky said the rabbits' appetite should not be a concern for the North Koreans. "They'll eat absolutely anything," he said. "It's no big problem."
As an added bonus, Szmolinsky says the meat is quite tasty.
"I eat a lot of roast rabbit," he said.
