A court in Turkey has sentenced three men to ten years in prison for poisoning street dogs.
Ankara – A Turkish court has sentenced three men to ten years in prison for poisoning street dogs.
Ankara Grand Criminal Chamber No. 5 also fined each defendant 15,000 Turkish lira. The decision was welcomed by animal activists who followed the process.
According to the Anadolunews agency, referring to the indictment, the accused had fed chicken dipped in pesticides to street dogs in Ankara, causing their gruesome death.
Cat massacre with poison, Kos Island-Greece
Movies that show the dogs in agony when residents hurried to the scene of the crime triggered public outrage. Animal activists have long been committed to defining that violence against animals is a crime, not an offense. Existing laws only provide fines for crimes against animals.
Under increasing pressure from the public, the Turkish government had hurriedly announced a new ministerial law on animal rights. The new law is intended to enable the courts to sentence up to four and a half years in prison for the killing and torture of pets and street animals.
poison bait
According to the changes, people found guilty of killing and torturing animals are sentenced to prison terms between four months and three years. If suspects have injured more than one animal, the sentence can be increased to four and a half years.
People who have forced animals to fight are given a draft of two to three years.
On the subject
– Turkey – Animal welfare: Turkish police set up new cyber team against animal abusers!
The Turkish Police’s Cybercrime Department now has 11 new teams available. One of these teams will track animal violence online.
The new team is responsible for identifying users on social networks who share and distribute images of violence against animals.The actual perpetrators of the crimes would also be identified, the police said.
And I mean…Although Turkey is not an EU country and no one believes that Turkey will ever enter the EU, one has to say that these penalties are almost unknown in many EU countries.
10 years for the murder of an animal is a punishment that can have a big impact.
Germany claims it has one of the best animal welfare laws in Europe, but such a punishment for murdering an animal has not yet been posted here!
We very much welcome the judgment and hope that other countries belonging to the “civilized” EU will soon follow this example.
Most of the following dates back to 2014/15; and so the KaiBao Pharmaceutical ‘five year plan’ to develop and alternative to extracting bear bile should be reaching its end of its term now – 2020.
This is an old article from The Guardian newspaper in London; relating to bear bile farming.
KaiBao Pharmaceutical is a major outlet for industrial bear bile farms. But as public opinion has turned against the practice of bear bile farming, the company has developed a five-year plan to support alternatives and has even gained support from China’s Ministry of Science and Technology.
We have been looking into the 5 year plan to end bear bile farming and have not found much in the way of news. But this does not mean that things are not moving forward. The younger generation in the Far East areas where the bile is produced are without doubt, becoming more animal welfare conscious; which is great news as they will eventually stop this barbarity. Over the last year or so, here n England, we have been working with Animals Asia UK regarding alternatives to bear bile. We know that Jill has many of the ‘alternative plants’ located at the bear sanctuaries that AA operate. Much can now be reproduced using herbs and plants; so if people decide that they still need something of this type, cruelty free replacements are being researched all the time.
Positive results to help animal suffering often do not happen overnight – and so the fight goes on to stop this barbaric torment of beautiful bears.
Regards WAV.
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Is the end of ‘house of horror’ bear bile factories in sight?
After decades of activism against bear bile farms, a Chinese pharmaceutical company has announced it is developing a synthetic alternative
If we grant bears any modicum of intelligence or emotional experience, if we grant them the capacity to suffer pain or mental anguish, then bear bile farming – which houses bears in tiny cages for the breadth of their life in order to repeatedly extract their bile – poses a whole slew of ethical questions.
Indeed, for decades activists have been campaigning to stop the trade, which extracts bear bile for use in Chinese medicine.
But now, the industry that profits from it may succeed in doing it for them. Last year, Kaibao Pharmaceuticals, which supplies around half of the bear bile consumed in China, said it plans to develop a synthetic alternative to the popular curative using government funding.
“If the largest producer of bear bile is now looking into a synthetic alternative to their product, this can only be a good thing for the bears on the farms,” said Jill Robinson, the head of Animals Asia, a group that has been fighting bear farming in Asia for more than 15 years.
In a brief statement, Kaibao announced it was using poultry bile and “biotransformation technology” to create a substance chemically similar to bear bile, but without the bear in it. It intends to spend 12m yuan (£1.3m)of its own cash on developing the substance. In addition, Kaibao won a 5.3m yuan (£570,000) subsidy from China’s government and another 6 million yuan (£650,000) from the regional government. If successful, Kaibao would own the intellectual rights to the new poultry-based, but bear-like, bile.
“This is an opportunity for practitioners and consumers to make a shift from using threatened species, to legal and sustainable alternatives, illustrating the [Traditional Chinese Medicine’s] community’s commitment to conservation of wildlife and legal trade,” said Chris Shepherd, a bear bile trade expert and the conservation group, Traffic’s regional director of Southeast Asia.
“The shift, however, must come from within this community,” he added.
The most important component of bear bile is ursodeoxycholic acid, which has been shown in research to be effective against some ailments, such as select liver diseases. Yet, traditional practitioners prescribe bear bile for much more, including everything from a sore throat to epilepsy.
There are two ways to acquire the bile today: either kill a bear in the wild and cut out its gall bladder or in the case of the so-called bear bile farms (though factories may be a more apt word) repeatedly drain the gall bladders of captive animals.
Inside the bear bile factory
Robinson, who has visited a number of bear bile facilities, describes them as a house of horrors.
“[Bears] are constantly thirsty and hungry, get little or no veterinary care and essentially are tortured their whole lives,” she said. “Today… thousands of moon bears lie in constant pain and anguish in cages that are no bigger than coffins. A number of crude and brutal methods are used to extract their bile – rusting catheters, barbaric full-metal jackets with neck spikes, medicinal pumps and open, infected holes drilled into their bellies.”
The conditions are indeed alarming, according to many who follow the trade. Bears are kept in “crush cages,” which are deliberately too small for animals to stand or move much. In order to extract the bile – often daily – workers make permanent holes or fistula into the bear’s gall bladder. The bile is extracted, or ‘milked’ in the industry nomenclature, via metal tubes or other methods. Conditions are often so unsanitary, and bears so sick, that experts have raised public health concern about consuming bile from these places.
“Some bears are put into cages as cubs and never released,” said Robinson adding that “most farmed bears are starved, dehydrated and suffer from multiple diseases and malignant tumours that ultimately kill them.”
If the bears live long enough – and life-spans are short here – they can be bile milked for decades. However, usually after 10 to 20 years, bears stop producing enough to pay for their room and board. They are then commonly killed and their body parts sold.
Animal rights activists contend that these conditions cause massive psychological harm to the bears. In one rumored incident, a mother bear reportedly broke out of her cage while her cub was being milked. Reaching the cub, the mother suffocated it to death. Then the mother bear bashed her head against a wall until she perished. Some animal rights activists called it a murder-suicide, though the incident has never been substantiated.
Other observers have reported bears refusing to eat until they simply wasted away and died.
Still, not everyone views bear bile farming as cruel.
“The process of extracting bear bile is like turning on a tap: natural, easy and without pain. After they’re done, the bears can even play happily outside. I don’t think there’s anything out of the ordinary! It might even be a very comfortable process!” said Fang Shuting the head of the Chinese Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 2012.
Shuting’s comments were in defence of another bear bile company’s, Guizhentang Pharmaceutical, plans to go public on the Hong Kong stock exchange. By going public, Guizhentang hoped to triple its number of captive bears from 400 to 1,200.
But the company’s proposal was met with a passionate, grassroots campaign by Chinese activists that eventually derailed the listing, while Shuting’s comments were derided in social media and condemned by bear bile experts.
In all, experts estimate that there are at least 12,000 bears in bear bile facilities today. The bulk of the bears are housed in China, though Vietnam, Laos, Burma, South Korea also sport facilities. While there is significant demand for bear bile in China, it is also sold across Southeast Asia as far south as Malaysian Borneo.
Conservation concerns
Despite what it has become, the origins of bear farming was, at least rhetorically, in part to save wild bears. The Chinese have been consuming bear bile for over a thousand years. But before the rise of these farms, practitioners simply went into the woods, killed a bear, and then removed its gall bladder with the lucrative bile inside.
Over the centuries, not surprisingly, bears began to vanish. It’s a similar story to many other animals targeted by the Chinese medicine trade, such as tigers, pangolins, Sumatran and Javan rhinos, Asian turtles, and more. Like bears, these have all faced relentless hunting for purported curatives. This over-hunting, combined with massive habitat loss, has led to the complete destruction of some populations and declines in others.
The main target of the bear bile trade – the Asian black bear (Ursus thibetanus) also known as the moon bear – is today listed as vulnerable by the IUCN Red List. Little is known about its total population, although as few as 25,000 may survive in the wild and it has certainly vanished from much of its former range and is in decline where it persists. The trade, however, has also targeted the sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) – also vulnerable – and various subspecies of brown bear.
But solely from a conservation perspective – setting aside ethical concerns – the start of bear bile farms in the 1980s was initially hoped to relieve some pressure on wild bears. The idea was if bear farms raised a self-sustaining population of productive animals than poachers would have little impetus to capture or kill bears in the wild.
But experts say that hasn’t happened and there are a number of reasons why. For one thing, breeding bears isn’t cheap, and in most cases it’s probably still less expensive and easier to steal bears from the wild to repopulate farms with high turnover. For another, experts believe that more bear bile on the market has pushed practitioners to prescribe the substance more freely and for a broader array of ailments, many not connected to traditional use. Finally, there are those consumers that appear to prefer bear bile from wild animals, either viewing it as more authentic or concerned about the sanitary conditions – or lack thereof – on bear farms.
Illegal metal jacket had just been taken off by the farmer in Weihai in eastern Chinese province of Shandong, and flung into a corner at a bear bile farm in Weihai city, east Chinas Shandong province. Photograph: Imaginechina/Corbis
Robinson says the proof that bear farms are still stealing animals from the wild is as easy as looking at their mangled charges.
“Approximately 30% of rescued bears at our sanctuary in Chengdu are missing limbs or have obvious snare or trap wounds indicating that they were wild caught,” she said, adding that wild-caught bears are often more aggressive as well.
Yet, the paucity of oversight from the government – and the fact that much of the trade occurs underground – means it’s up to NGOs to make guesses.
“We almost have to take on a detective role, working through the injuries and wounds on the bears’ bodies and piecing the evidence together to continue the case against the industry,” Robinson added.
She said some bear facilities certainly do breed animals – and parade the cubs around to prove it – but “we believe that their breeding is not as successful as they would maintain, and it is clearly easier and cheaper to bring in wild caught bears than spend funds on denning pens and the extra food the females require during the breeding season.”
The fact that bear farms have not mitigated threats in the wild is outlined by a 2012 International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) resolution calling for a phasing out of bear farms, including shuttering any illegal facilities and not establishing new ones. The motion said evidence was “lacking” that bear farms had lessened killing of wild bears.
Given this, a paper in Oryx last year suggested that we rename bear farms – which gives the sense of domesticated bears breeding freely – to “bile extraction facilities”.
Still, the Chinese government has recently challenged the IUCN resolution, according to Shepherd, claiming that the industry is capable of providing bear bile without resorting to wild bear capture or poaching.
This is a view echoed by Fang Shunting, “bear farming is the best way to protect wild bears. Given the market demand, how could we prevent wild bear hunting?”
Will traditional doctors get on board?
Now, let’s assume Kaibao Pharmaceuticals is successful in developing a synthetic alternative to bear bile, using poultry. Let’s also assume the company – which brings in more than $50m a year in net sales – aggressively pushes the alternative. The big question, according to Traffic’s Shepherd, is will traditional doctors accept that synthetic bear bile – made from poultry – is just as good as the real thing?
Convincing practitioners may prove quite difficult. For one thing, there are already a slew of alternatives available, yet bear bile remains in high demand. Indeed, ursodeoxycholic acid – the most important component of bear bile – has already been synthetically reproduced in the US and prescribed for very specific diseases.
“There are more than 50 herbal [and] legal alternatives that we would also strongly encourage practitioners and retailers to recommend to consumers,” said Shepherd. “If practitioners moves towards these alternatives, consumers would follow.”
So why would Kaibao’s synthetic alternative make any difference? Experts are cautiously hopeful because this version would come from one of the biggest sellers of bear bile today. Unlike Western synthetic versions, it would also be home grown. According to Shepherd, though, the most important thing for Kaibao is to convince traditional doctors.
“The key is the practitioners… people listen to, and trust, their doctor,” he said.
To this end, Animals Asia has long been asking practitioners to stop prescribing bear bile in a campaign they call Healing Without Harm.
“To date thousands of doctors have joined us in pledging never to use or prescribe bear bile,” noted Robinson.
What do animals experience
Of course, one of the ironies of Kaibao’s announcement is that their synthetic bear bile would still come from an animal. Although the company did not respond to repeated inquiries, it appears from their statement that they would likely be sourced from already-farmed poultry.
“This remains an ethical dilemma and the debate surrounding the use of all animal products continues and remains entirely worthwhile,” said Robinson. But, she added, “from the point of view of ending bear bile farming, and drastically reducing suffering of animals caged and mutilated for anything up to 30 years of their lives, this is a huge step.”
Bear torture?
In the meantime, more than 10,000 bears remain in these facilities where Robinson says they “suffer terribly”. But that brings us back to our first question. What do animals experience? Can we really know if the bears in these facilities suffer or are they “without pain” as Shuting argues?
“Bears, like us, are warm bloodied mammals with a central nervous system and pain receptors, indicating that they deserve the benefit of doubt, and indeed feel pain,” said Robinson.
Indeed, recent research has found that more animals experience suffering – or negative stimuli – than long believed. For centuries, scientists and philosophers have debated whether animals are generally automatons – driven solely by instinct and lacking thought or emotion – rather than distinct individuals with personalities and a rich emotional life. But the famous discoveries that chimps use tools, whales sing, and crows solve problems has largely crushed the automaton argument.
Recent research has even revealed that invertebrates – let alone mammals, birds, reptiles, etc – undergo suffering and have some level of what we call intelligence. For example, scientists have found that crustaceans – such as lobsters – feel pain and may even experience anxiety; wasps maintain long-term memory; bees are capable of counting; and even cockroaches have personalities.
Unlike these invertebrates, though, people have historically viewed bears as particularly clever and sensitive animals. For centuries, people have trained bears as entertainment. Now largely viewed as cruel, such training proved that these big mammals could learn new tasks quickly. Despite such displays of cleverness – and the fact that bears sport the largest brains relative to body size of any carnivore (bigger than your pet dog) – there has been surprisingly little research on bear intelligence.
One of the few studies came out last year when researchers found that bears could “count”. Researchers trained American black bears to select groupings of dots based on which was bigger or smaller. The bears performed as well in the study as primates. In 2012, another researcher documented a wild brown bear carefully selecting barnacle-covered rocks to scratch itself, possible evidence of tool use.
“[Bear] intelligence is often said to be equal to that of a dolphin or a three-year-old child. But I feel that this description really doesn’t do justice to their individuality, and intelligence that we have yet to properly define,” said Robinson, who points to her years of experience working with hundreds of rescued bears at Animals Asia facilities.
“They learn very quickly and work things through. They have pre-emptive and anticipatory behaviour that allows them to improve or benefit their own lives,” she said, noting that bears are particularly choosy about making comfortable beds – maybe Goldilocks was based on real observation – and that her rescued bears quickly learn to sleep during employees’ lunch break because “this is a quiet time at the sanctuaries and that little happens… just before our team return to work, the bears will start to rouse too.”
Robinson also said that rescued bears’ behaviour clearly changes over time. In the beginning, the bears shrink away as people approach and even moan aloud – anticipating that they will be harmed, according to Robinson, as they were in the bile factories – or become aggressive. But after months in the sanctuary, bears become more relaxed, more social, and maybe even, as one could describe it, psychologically sane.
“Bears that previously exploded in anger at the mere presence of a human are calm and trusting, and slowly they comprehend that the approach of our staff is a positive addition to their lives,” Robinson said, adding they are “no longer violently stereotypic, or aggressive”.
Animals Asia’s two sanctuaries – one in China and one in Vietnam – now houses around 500 bears, all rescued from bear bile facilities. If Kaibao synthetic alternative works, though, Animals Asia may have to take on the care of many more bears, though it doesn’t seem they would mind.
“[Rescued bears] ultimately prove to be fun-loving, trusting and forgiving of the species that caused them indescribable pain,” noted Robinson.
But can bears forgive? Are they capable of granting absolution – and even if they are would they really choose to forgive us? Perhaps we may never know, but either way it may well be that we need it.
After China’s top expert for infectious diseases warned that “pets” needed to be quarantined if they had contact with coronavirus patients, people started buying masks for the animals they live with. But shortly after, the concerns amongst people reportedly gave way to some gruesome measures.
📷 Zhou Tianxiao
Officials and companies in various provinces, villages and municipalities across China were ordered by their superiors to issue the strict instructions for locals to tackle the epidemic. One village in Hebei urged all households to “deal with” their pets within five days, otherwise officials would “handle” them, reports the site www.express.co.uk.
The World Health Organization (WHO), however, claimed that there is no evidence of the virus being passed onto cats or dogs.
Sadly, the panic is too great to heed any advice from the WHO and humans have always put themselves and their concerns over the lives of the rest of the animals. There’s still the anthropocentric view that at the slightest threat to human health, we, as a species, can dispose of the fundamental rights of the rest.
That’s why we will not stop saying it until the reality tells us otherwise: non-humans are THE MOST OPPRESSED group of individuals on the planet and that is why we focus on defending their rights and changing our collective perception of them.
As a child, I was told that rats transmit diseases, they are ugly and disgusting, and I was taught that these animals are particularly responsible for the transmission of life-threatening diseases.
There has never been a peaceful coexistence with rats in my house, aggression and family panic have always existed, and cruel measures have been taken to eliminate them, wich was very easy because they are the weakest and most vulnerable.
I’m glad today that I found this video.
And post it for everyone who has taken fear, phobias or even disgust at certain animals from his home.
The sooner the right education about animals begins, the sooner you learn to respect all animals, to respect their rights and existence, the more likely it is that later, in your adult life, you will belong to the civilized.
The full text of Phoenix’s passionate acceptance speech, as he wins the best actor Academy Award for Joker.
Biggest night in Hollywood: key moments from the Oscars – video
I’m full of so much gratitude now. I do not feel elevated above any of my fellow nominees or anyone in this room, because we share the same love – that’s the love of film. And this form of expression has given me the most extraordinary life. I don’t know where I’d be without it.
But I think the greatest gift that it’s given me, and many people in [this industry] is the opportunity to use our voice for the voiceless. I’ve been thinking about some of the distressing issues that we’ve been facing collectively.
I think at times we feel or are made to feel that we champion different causes. But for me, I see commonality. I think, whether we’re talking about gender inequality or racism or queer rights or indigenous rights or animal rights, we’re talking about the fight against injustice.
We’re talking about the fight against the belief that one nation, one people, one race, one gender, one species, has the right to dominate, use and control another with impunity.
I think we’ve become very disconnected from the natural world. Many of us are guilty of an egocentric world view, and we believe that we’re the centre of the universe. We go into the natural world and we plunder it for its resources. We feel entitled to artificially inseminate a cow and steal her baby, even though her cries of anguish are unmistakeable. Then we take her milk that’s intended for her calf and we put it in our coffee and our cereal.
We fear the idea of personal change, because we think we need to sacrifice something; to give something up. But human beings at our best are so creative and inventive, and we can create, develop and implement systems of change that are beneficial to all sentient beings and the environment.
I have been a scoundrel all my life, I’ve been selfish. I’ve been cruel at times, hard to work with, and I’m grateful that so many of you in this room have given me a second chance.
I think that’s when we’re at our best: when we support each other.
Not when we cancel each other out for our past mistakes, but when we help each other to grow. When we educate each other; when we guide each other to redemption.
When he was 17, my brother [River] wrote this lyric. He said: “run to the rescue with love and peace will follow.”
In Spain, the Party against animal abuse (PACMA)has published a video that shows a horse “collapsing from exhaustion” after being forced to drag a car loaded with sacks along a sand track during a shooting and drag test held in August 2019 in the Valencian town of Riba-roja de Túria, east of the country.
According to this match, the images represent “another sign that animal abuse in shooting and drag is the norm, not the exception.”
THIS is what the Generalitat Valenciana supports, year after year, a government that claims to be progressive. How long will they allow this terrible and continued abuse?
Heavy blows on the snout, belly, testicles … PACMA has just denounced and made public another cruel practice with animals: the shooting and drag competitions that are held in several municipalities of Valencia.
The Partido Animalista Contra el Maltrato Animal(PACMA) has filed several complaints with the Generalitat Valenciana and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports for the “systematized abuse” to which horses are subjected to the shooting and drag shows.
PACMA has once again documented the mistreatment of horses used in draft and drag. PACMA activists recorded on Sunday August 11, 2019 in the Valencian population of Riba-roja de Túria how a horse collapsed from exhaustion after being forced to drag a car loaded with sacks along a sand track.
This video is another sign that animal abuse in shooting and drag is the norm, not the exception. We have been almost a year without going to document any shooting and drag championship, and in the first one we have been after all this time we have witnessed images that blood the heart of anyone who has a minimum of empathy and respect for animals.
Two years ago, some very hard images were recorded in several shooting and drag championships in different Valencian towns, which collected punches in the head of the horses, blows in the testicles, kicks, insults …
When asked about it, the Mayor of Valencia,Joan Ribó, said that there are “culture-based” practices that the authorities do not want to “prohibit”. However, he said that his community is trying to “gradually suppress all elements associated with animal aggression becauseit is in line with people’s new ways of thinking,” the La Vanguardianewspaper said.
Since then, the world of shooting and pulling has tried to defend itself against the criticism of public opinion, arguing that animal abuse and use of the tail to “motivate” horses are no longer allowed.
However, all of this is nothing more than a mere excuse, because pulling in itself is animal abuse. Even if the animal is not beaten during the test, it is violent if the horse is forced to pull a car on a dirt track that weighs three times more than its weight and at a temperature of 40 degrees.
Today the controversy continues about this cruelty which the Valencian authorities consider to be a sport and which is subsidized by public funds.
PACMA will continue denouncing this practice and claiming before the Generalitat Valenciana the end of the use of horses for the fun of a few psychopaths.
And I mean: The worst shame of mankind is the preservation of a tradition when it is associated with the torture or even the death of an animal. In most countries it is considered as “necessary” and “justified” torturing and killing an animal in the name of tradition, but today are only the economic interests that keep a tradition alive.
Especially in Spain, only the subsidized coffers of this bankrupt country would look pretty poor, if Spain abolished all of its traditional animal torture fiestas.
WAV Comment – A very interesting article from the excellent National Geographic.
”The scale of the live wild animal trade in China is unclear, experts say. Many animals are poached, imported, and exported illegally—for food, medicine, trophies, and pets. The Chinese traditional medicine industry, which heavily relies on ancient belief in the healing powers of animal parts, is a massive driver of the trade”.
Maybe now it really is time that China looked at itself; and especially its antiquated beliefs that support healthy living by eating live animals is good for you (has it done anything to stop the virus ?) – and now makes all the necessary changes to get into Century 21 and stop being labelled as the international disease spreader by its unhygienic approaches to the treatment of sentient beings.
For Cordelia, the 18-year-old university student from Guangzhou, life is at a standstill. School is closed, and she can’t visit her family. Reflecting on the biological crisis that emerged from a cultural practice she can’t relate to, she says, “I believe nature gives back to us what we give to it.”
Maybe that time has now arrived – time for change !
More Chinese push to end wildlife markets as WHO declares coronavirus emergency
Media coverage of China’s wildlife markets sends the message that they’re hugely popular. In reality, many Chinese can’t relate.
At a wildlife market in Shenzhen, vendors display live reptiles and mammals for sale. In China, 54 species can be traded legally for human consumption. The coronavirus outbreak has thrust the live wildlife trade into the international spotlight.
On a farm near Beijing last September, a group of conservationists put in a call to police: They’d found thousands of live birds being stored in a barn. Police seized and released the birds—about 10,000 in all—which had been caught illegally with traps and were destined for restaurants and markets in southern China. Among them were yellow-breasted buntings, critically endangered songbirds whose numbers have been in freefall, largely because people in parts of China want to eat them.
The spread of a deadly strain of coronavirus, sourced to a wildlife market in Wuhan and now a global health emergency, according to the World Health Organization, has thrust China’s live wild animal trade into the spotlight. On January 26, China announced a ban on its wild animal trade until the crisis is over. Images of sick, suffering animals in markets, and videos of bats boiling alive in bowls of soup have circulated in media, sparking outrage globally and creating the impression that buying live wild animals for eating is a megascale phenomenon in China.
The reality is more nuanced. In Guangzhou, a city of 14 million in the southeast and a frequent destination for yellow-breasted buntings, eating wildlife appears exceedingly common. In Beijing, it’s exceedingly rare.
In reality, to many Chinese, consuming wild animals is a cultural outlier. State-controlled media outlets such as China Daily have published scathing editorials denouncing the practice and calling for a permanent wildlife trade ban. These calls in turn are amplified by thousands of Chinese citizens on state-censored social media networks such as Weibo, indicating that the government seems to be letting the momentum build.
The scale of the live wild animal trade in China is unclear, experts say. Many animals are poached, imported, and exported illegally—for food, medicine, trophies, and pets. The Chinese traditional medicine industry, which heavily relies on ancient belief in the healing powers of animal parts, is a massive driver of the trade.
The government allows 54 wild species to be bred on farms and sold for consumption, including minks, ostriches, hamsters, snapping turtles, and Siamese crocodiles. Many wild animals, such as snakes and birds of prey, are poached and brought to state-licensed farms, says Zhou Jinfeng, secretary-general of the China Biodiversity Conservation and Green Development Foundation, an NGO in Beijing that helped with the bird rescue in September. Zhou says some farmers claim that their animals were bred legally in captivity for conservation but then sell them to markets or collectors.
It’s unknown how many live wildlife markets exist in China, but experts estimate they could number in the hundreds. Some department and big-box stores also sell wild meat and live amphibians for consumption. For market buyers, frogs are a common and inexpensive wildlife dish, says Peter Li, China policy specialist at Humane Society International and professor in East Asian politics at the University of Houston-Downtown. On the high end, Li says, only the rich can afford soup made with palm civet (a cat-size mammal native to jungles throughout Southeast Asia), fried cobra, or braised bear paw.
Such food was not part of Li’s experience growing up. “My parents never cooked wild animals, and [we’ve] never eaten them. I’ve never had snake—much less cobra.”
Rebecca Wong, assistant professor of sociology and behavioral sciences at the City University of Hong Kong, argues in her 2019 book about the illegal wildlife trade in China that consuming wildlife “is a common phenomenon in mainland China.” But Wong cautions against stereotyping this practice, arguing that the idea of the “Asian superconsumer” is a myth and that complex motivations are at play, including peer pressure, societal pressure, and the impulse to chase status.
A 2014 study that surveyed more than a thousand people in five Chinese cities found radically different practices in different parts of the country. In Guangzhou, 83 percent of people interviewed had eaten wildlife in the previous year. In Shanghai, 14 percent had, and in Beijing, just 5 percent. Nationwide, more than half the respondents said wild animals shouldn’t be eaten at all.
Same city, different cultural experiences
Charles, 22, and Cordelia, 18, are university students from the Guangzhou area, where wild animal consumption is purportedly high. I spoke with each through Instagram, where they use English names. (Both asked National Geographic not to use their last names—Instagram is banned in China, but like many young people, they use VPNs to access it.)
Charles says eating wild animals is very common in his community, but his family doesn’t partake much, and he eats only occasionally and out of curiosity. “Nowadays, older people buy them more than younger,” he says. He thinks it’s because of education.
Cordelia, who lives in downtown Guangzhou, says the practice isn’t at all common in her family or community. “My friends and family don’t really like eating wild animals, and we think it’s disgusting.” She explains that she sees it as “disrespectful and a strong violation to mother nature.” She believes the ongoing epidemic may move others to see it that way too. “I think after this terrible spread of coronavirus, citizens will realize that the belief that eating wild animals is beneficial is not reliable.”
Cordelia and Charles both support making the ban on the wild animal trade permanent, and they say they’ve seen an outpouring of support for it on Weibo.
Cordelia’s mention that belief in health benefits help drive consumption is reflected on market floors. Live animals sell for a higher price—often two to three times more—than dead ones. “People think food is more nutritious if it’s live and fresh,” Li says. “An animal may be dying, but it’s alive.”
A “cauldron of contagion”
In markets, animals “are dying, they are thirsty, they are in rusty cages and totally dirty,” Li says. They may be missing limbs or have open wounds from their capture in the wild or injuries sustained during transport. “The traders don’t handle them gently—they smash the cages down to the floor when unloading and loading. The animals suffer a lot.”
The chaos of the trade enables the spread of zoonotic diseases—those that spread from animals to humans—says Christian Walzer, chief global veterinarian at the U.S.-based Wildlife Conservation Society. Wild animals, he explains, can carry viruses that “in a normal world, would not come into contact with humans.” These carriers aren’t sick—they’re simply “silent reservoirs.” But as we encroach into animals’ habitats, we increase our exposure.
Seventy percent of zoonotic diseases come from wildlife, says Erin Sorrell, an assistant research professor in the department of microbiology and immunology at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C. The diseases can be notoriously devastating: HIV, Ebola, and SARS are among those that have made the leap from wildlife to humans, spawning international outbreaks.
In wildlife markets in China and Southeast Asia, there may be 40 species—birds, mammals, reptiles—“stacked on top of each other,” Walzer says. The mixing of air and bodily secretions allows viruses to exchange, potentially creating new strains. Walzer sums it up as a “cauldron of contagion.”
Evidence points to bats as the source of the Wuhan coronavirus. It’s unclear which species then transmitted the disease to humans, but in an assessment of the Wuhan market, the coronavirus was detected in the live wild animal section.
Preventing déjà vu
Many conservationists I spoke to believe that China’s temporary ban of the wildlife trade—which applies to all markets, grocery stores, and online sales and includes a quarantine on all breeding facilities—is likely to be largely successful. The government has set up a hotline for people to report violations. “This is an emergency situation,” Peter Li says. “Everyone is watching. Any trader who violates the ban will be reported.” On top of that, fear of coronavirus likely reduces demand—even if sellers are willing to offer live animals illegally, people may not want to buy them.
China has resorted to a ban before. In 2003, at the height of SARS epidemic, which is believed to have originated in civets, the government issued a temporary ban on the wildlife trade. Six months later, it lifted the ban, allowing breeding facilities to resume business. Li says it’s difficult to say whether the overall live wildlife trade has grown during the past two decades, but he believes that more of the transactions have gone underground to evade law enforcement.
There’s always the risk that this could happen again, Sorrell notes. “There’s been a 15-to-16-year gap [since SARS], but who’s to say it’s going to be another 16 years before we see the next disease emerge from a live animal market?”
To make the temporary ban permanent, there would need to be clarification on what it actually encompasses. Some of its terms are vague, leaving them open to interpretation at the local law enforcement level. For example, does the ban include dried wildlife parts, such as bone and scales? It should, several experts tell me, but as written, it’s unclear.
A permanent ban would face strong opposition from business interests, Li says. The State Forestry and Grassland Administration, which is responsible for issuing licenses to wildlife breeders, “has long been a spokesperson for the wildlife interest,” he says. (A Forestry Administration official had not responded to a request for comment before publication.)
Sorrell emphasizes the need for caution in the pursuit of a permanent ban.
“I would love to see wildlife be removed from markets, full stop,” she says. But if a ban is rushed without careful consideration, the entire wildlife trade could move underground, making it “even more dangerous for [a product] to be consumed because we’re not seeing where it’s being consumed or where it’s coming from.”
“For any ban to be effective, it will be important to get buy-in from citizens,” adds Caroline Dingle, an evolutionary biologist in the conservation forensics lab at Hong Kong University, who studies wildlife crime. “People need to believe that consuming wild animals is bad for them personally for any ban to work long-term.”
If a permanent ban is adopted, Li says, it would be important for the government to buy out or compensate farmers to make it possible for them to pursue a different livelihood.
Meanwhile, for yellow-breasted buntings, verging on extinction because of recent rapid consumption, something more has to give. It’s already against the law to catch the birds, but that hasn’t slowed their trade.
For Cordelia, the 18-year-old university student from Guangzhou, life is at a standstill. School is closed, and she can’t visit her family. Reflecting on the biological crisis that emerged from a cultural practice she can’t relate to, she says, “I believe nature gives back to us what we give to it.”
But she draws my attention to the unity she’s seen in the wake of the crisis and the outcry on Weibo and in Chinese newspapers. “I think,” she types over Instagram, “revolutionary change is highly possible.”
Australian summers can be tough for people and animals…
And while many of us can endure the hottest days with the help of air conditioning and plenty of fluids to keep us hydrated, our wildlife friends can suffer terribly during extreme heat, and even die. Here are 6 ways you can help make the difference between life and death for wildlife during increasingly hot and dry Aussie summers:
Click on this link to read the 6 ways that you can make the difference between life and death for Australian wildlife:
Cat massacre with poison, Kos Island-Greece
poison bait
World Animals Voice 