POLICE FIGHT CHINESE WILDLIFE MARKET

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Police struggle to crack down on China's appetite for anything with four

legs

 

02.05.06

By Clifford Coonan

 

SHANGHAI - In a country where many people live by the saying " eat anything

with four legs that is not a chair " , the police are battling back against

smugglers transporting bear paws and other exotic delicacies on to China's

dinner plates.

 

Officers made 20 arrests in a smuggling ring in southwestern Yunnan, seizing

278 bear paws and 416 armadillo-like pangolins, which had been brought by

train from neighbouring provinces between December and January, the *Yunnan

Daily* said.

 

The pangolins had been injected with tranquilisers to keep them quiet.

 

China is the world's top consumer of wildlife but has pledged to introduce

sustainable trade in wild plants and animals. Its 1989 Wildlife Protection

Law banned the consumption of internationally protected species, but it

faces a difficult task.

 

It is not an unusual sight in the south to see live deer in a pen or

crocodiles in a restaurant tank for diners. China's growing wealth means

more banquets, which means more exotic wildlife on the menu, such as

pangolins, bear paw and tiger. In southern China, for example, rare meat is

called " ye wei " (wild taste), and people believe exotic food can endow you

with bravery, long life or sexual prowess.

 

The common saying in northern China is that the Cantonese " eat anything that

has four legs and is not a chair and anything that flies and is not an

airplane " .

 

Bear paws are used to treat everything from cancer to " general body

weakness, " arthritis and impotence.

 

Each bear paw sells in the markets of Shanghai for around $1000.

 

The animals are also prized for their bile, which is used in 123 kinds of

Chinese medicines.

 

Pangolin meat sells for $400 a kilo and each animal yields up to five kilos,

so a good size pangolin is worth $2000.

 

Its meat is considered highly nutritious, and its scales are prescribed for

breast-feeding mothers, arthritis, asthma and for stopping infants

dribbling.

 

One application is used for prostate cancer and another for haemophilia. Its

urine also has medicinal purposes.

 

And it's not just food. Traditional Chinese medicine is undergoing a

revival, as people turn to old-fashioned methods of healing as an

alternative to the country's under-invested public health system.

 

A trip to a Chinese apothecary is a journey through drawer after drawer of

exotic ingredients.

 

In the markets there are sections which look like petting zoos for exotic

wildlife, including pangolin, civet cats and giant salamanders, although you

have to be in the know to get access to them.

 

Among the unorthodox cures, by Western standards, are golden turtle's blood,

which is used as a cure for cancer, sea horse to treat asthma, heart disease

and impotence.

 

Rhino horn stops convulsions, pickled turtle flippers give longer life and

fresh snake blood is a potent aphrodisiac. Eating owl is supposed to be good

for the eyesight.

 

In restaurants, people often use code words to order the endangered species.

Pangolin, for example, could be sold as mountain dragon or some other more

common, exotic animal.

 

Trade in pangolin meat and freshwater turtles has taken over from extremely

rare items such as tiger paw, rhino horn and the gall bladder of bears

because of a crackdown in the trade of the endangered items in the

Asia-Pacific region.

 

However, since the Sars outbreak, some Chinese diners have lost their taste

for animals such as the civet cat, which was believed to be responsible for

the initial flare-up of the disease in 2002, which killed 774 people.

 

There have been efforts to turn people off the desire for exotic wildlife,

with television adverts featuring kung fu star Jackie Chan.

 

- INDEPENDENT