Police in the Tongchuan district of Dazhou, Sichuan province, have detained a shop keeper for causing a couple to take home chicken bottoms mixed with rat poison.

The Dazhou municipal government has asked the local television station to repeatedly broadcast a notice looking for them.

It has also asked China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom, the three major telecommunications operators in China, to send 2.9 million text messages to locate the couple and warn them not to eat the chicken bottoms, according to Luo Anchun, chief of the city’s emergency response office.

The shop keeper surnamed Liu, 27, works in the Beishan Supermarket in the city's Tongchuan district, where wild cats are frequently seen gnawing on food after the store closes.

The supermarket asked Liu to mix poison with food waste such as chicken bottoms to kill the cats.

On Aug 12, Liu mixed the chicken bottoms and poison, and put them into a bag. He left the bag near a food counter around 9:30 pm.

A couple thought the meat was for sale and purchased it.

The supermarket called police, who reported the case to the municipal government.

The couple, surnamed Jia and Xu, were found the next day, before they had eaten the chicken bottoms.

"We planned to wash down the shredded chickens with beer at night. But when we opened the bag, we found they were chicken bottoms. We did not eat them and decided to exchange them for true shredded chickens in the supermarket the next day," Xu said.

"It almost killed my family of five," she told China Central Television.

According to Luo, Liu will be detained for 10 days and all the supermarkets in Tongchuan district will have a month-long self-examination to root out safety hazards.