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Thursday, 13 November 2008
China: Wild animals still being served
Wild animals are back on mainland plates even after the deadly Sars virus made some diners wary, and booming demand for traditional medicine is also threatening some plants, environmentalists said yesterday.
Wild animals are back on mainland plates even after the deadly Sars virus made some diners wary, and booming demand for traditional medicine is also threatening some plants, environmentalists said yesterday.
Nearly half of people living in urban areas had consumed wildlife in the past 12 months, either as food or medicine, with the rich and well educated most likely to tuck into a wild snake or turtle, a survey of urban dwellers in six cities found.
They enjoyed eating wildlife because they saw it as “unpolluted”, “special” and with extra nourishing and health powers, a study commissioned by Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network, found. “This consumer demand is increasingly placing the natural environment - both in China and abroad - at risk through unsustainable and illegal wildlife trade,” the report said.
Species endangered by their culinary and medicinal popularity on the mainland include pangolins, tigers and Chinese sturgeon, it said.
An outbreak of the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome virus five years ago resulted in a local gourmet favourite - the civet - being banished to the black market. The raccoon-like animal was blamed for spreading Sars, which infected 8,098 people globally, 1,755 of whom were from Hong Kong, and killed 774. Of those infected in Hong Kong, 299 died.
More than half the people surveyed were still worried about the threat of diseases, hinting at one possible tactic in the battle to cut sales of wildlife for the dining table.
The demand for medicine could also be as destructive to natural vegetation and habitats as the quest for food, in a country where traditional medicine is widely used and has also yielded valuable compounds for use in western treatments.
The country’s total exports of traditional medicine were worth US$1.1 billion last year.
Catering to this market and the demand from an expanding and increasingly wealthy domestic population is straining areas where wild plants are gathered.
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Wild animals still being served
Reuters in Beijing
13 November 2008
Wild animals are back on mainland plates even after the deadly Sars virus made some diners wary, and booming demand for traditional medicine is also threatening some plants, environmentalists said yesterday.
Nearly half of people living in urban areas had consumed wildlife in the past 12 months, either as food or medicine, with the rich and well educated most likely to tuck into a wild snake or turtle, a survey of urban dwellers in six cities found.
They enjoyed eating wildlife because they saw it as “unpolluted”, “special” and with extra nourishing and health powers, a study commissioned by Traffic, the wildlife trade monitoring network, found. “This consumer demand is increasingly placing the natural environment - both in China and abroad - at risk through unsustainable and illegal wildlife trade,” the report said.
Species endangered by their culinary and medicinal popularity on the mainland include pangolins, tigers and Chinese sturgeon, it said.
An outbreak of the deadly severe acute respiratory syndrome virus five years ago resulted in a local gourmet favourite - the civet - being banished to the black market. The raccoon-like animal was blamed for spreading Sars, which infected 8,098 people globally, 1,755 of whom were from Hong Kong, and killed 774. Of those infected in Hong Kong, 299 died.
More than half the people surveyed were still worried about the threat of diseases, hinting at one possible tactic in the battle to cut sales of wildlife for the dining table.
The demand for medicine could also be as destructive to natural vegetation and habitats as the quest for food, in a country where traditional medicine is widely used and has also yielded valuable compounds for use in western treatments.
The country’s total exports of traditional medicine were worth US$1.1 billion last year.
Catering to this market and the demand from an expanding and increasingly wealthy domestic population is straining areas where wild plants are gathered.
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