tagged w/ Tiger Bone Wine
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By Chengcheng Jiang / Beijing Wednesday, Mar. 31, 2010
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1976699,00.html?cnn=yes&hpt=C2#ixzz0jnesrjyv
It is an irony not lost on the Chinese public that the Year of the Tiger has not been good for the big cats. On Tuesday, state media reported that dozens of tigers and other endangered animals had died of malnutrition over the past two years at the Northern Forest Zoo in the Chinese city of Harbin. Workers, who later leaked the story to the media, buried their bodies in a 3-meter pit to hide the animals from authorities.
The report follows the news in March that 11 rare Siberian tigers had starved to death within a few months at the Shenyang Forest Wild Animal Zoo in northeast China. The cases have shed light on the murky world of China's 12 tiger farms, which were initially set up by the state in the 1980s to preserve the numbers of animals in existence. They have also underscored changing attitudes toward animal rights in a country where exotic animals have often been treasured less for their rarity and more for their medicinal or culinary benefits. (See the top 10 animal stories of 2009.)
Traditional Chinese medical theories have long extolled the health benefits of tonics and poultices made from rare animal parts, including everything from bear bile to deer antlers. Among enthusiasts for this esoteric branch of traditional medicine, few animals are more treasured for their nutritive qualities than the tiger. Tiger bone wine — a rice alcohol brewed in a vat with the carcass of one of the cats — is prized as a tonic for fatigue and sexual potency, for example. In an effort to clamp down on the lucrative poaching industry that sprung up around the big cats, sales of tiger parts were banned in 1993.
But that edict closed off the primary revenue stream for the dozen tiger farms nationwide. The Guilin Xiongsen Tigers and Bears Mountain Village in southern Yunnan province had 400 tigers when the sales ban was enacted. In hopes the ban would be temporary, the farm continued breeding and now has 1,500 tigers. Each tiger costs roughly $9 per day to feed, which equates to nearly $5 million a year in costs for the park. The revenue the village receives from visitors is far less than that. Some facilities have turned to unusual schemes to generate extra income. At the Harbin Siberian Tiger Park, visitors can pay about $6 to buy a live chicken tied to a stick, which they then dangle over the side of a tiger pen, watching as the animals tear it to pieces. A menu of sorts is available for tourists to choose from: about $120 gets you a live cow, which is then released into the pen with the tigers, with predictable consequences.
(See TIME's photo-essay "Afghan Tragedy: Death of a Snow Leopard.")
At the Shenyang and Harbin parks, however, budgets were apparently strained to such an extent that animals simply weren't fed for weeks at a time. The dire financial straits and gross neglect at the Shenyang site came to light only when disgruntled workers — who hadn't been paid for months — contacted the media.
The Chinese government has come under increasing pressure from owners of tiger farms to relax the ban on trading tiger parts. So far the government has resisted those efforts, a move that seems to be in keeping with shifting public sentiment. The back-to-back tiger tragedies have been followed closely in China, spurring calls for greater legal protections for animals. Meanwhile, lawmakers have been drafting the country's first regulations on animal abuse. The government is considering, among other things, a ban on the consumption of dog and cat meat, a culinary specialty in southern China. Under the proposed law, companies or restaurants that sell cat or dog meat could face fines of up to $73,000. (See 10 species near extinction.)
"Harming animals hurts the spirit of the people, especially the younger generation," says Chang Jiwen, a professor of law at the Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences and one of the key drivers of the legislation. "A ban on abusing animals generally would illustrate that China has reached a new level of civilization."
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1976699,00.html?cnn=yes&hpt=C2#ixzz0jnezg28aBy Chengcheng Jiang / Beijing Wednesday, Mar. 31, 2010
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A SECRET trade in "tiger bone wine" in a northeast China zoo was revealed today, raising questions about animal parks in the wake of a nationwide uproar triggered by 11 rare tigers who starved to death in Shenyang two weeks ago.
The centerpiece of the Northeast China Tiger Park in Heilongjiang Province is a huge fish tank containing liquor with a tiger's skeleton inside, according to a local news Website today.
Park officials sold the liquor for 780 yuan (US$114) for every 500 grams, according to the report.
A park staffer said the 780 yuan liquor was the cheapest. The best kind cost 2,880 yuan a bottle, each containing a fraction of genuine tiger bone, the report said. It was sold as a miraculous medicine that could strengthen bones.
The wine seller said the skeleton had been steeped in the liquor for at least three years, and the wine was good for treating rheumatism.
Trading tiger parts was banned in China in 1993, although tiger bones have long been used in traditional medicine.
Read more: http://www.shanghaidaily.com/sp/article/2010/201003/20100330/article_432743.htm#ixzz0jhDmieexA SECRET trade in "tiger bone wine" in a northeast China zoo was revealed... more
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The bodies of more than 30 animals, including rare white tigers and lions, that died of malnutrition have been found in a mass grave near a Chinese zoo.
The discovery comes just weeks after more than a dozen tigers were found to have died of starvation at another Chinese zoo amid suggestions that the administrators wanted to harvest their parts to make expensive – and banned – tiger-bone tonic.
The bones and remains of a quantity of animals could be seen poking through the snow In a three-metre deep pit near the Harbin Northern Forest Zoo, in Heilongjiang province in northeast China, state media reported.
They included two white tigers, five white lions, two leopards and five other big cats that had died in early 2008, zoo staff told a Chinese reporter.
Also believed to be buried in the mass grave were two of the zoo’s three Asian elephants and 28 of its 29 endangered great bustards.
Zoo officials said the deaths followed a decision in 2007 to change the animals’ diet to save money when the zoo ran into financial difficulties. A regimen of mutton and beef was replaced with chicken. Some keepers even gave their lions corn buns instead of meat.
Zhang Xinru, deputy head of the feeding department of the zoo, said that the animals showed no differences in the first month and a half of the new diet.
After six months the zoo noted a sharp fall in their body weight and after the deaths of 14 big cats in 2008 officials returned to feeding them beef and mutton. However, the animals were still suffering from malnutrition after a poor diet for such a long period.
Another zoo employee said that more than 80 per cent of the animals were being fed on bean cakes to keep up their protein levels. However, the zoo could no longer afford cakes of sufficient quality.
The employee said: “The animals eat this feed every day and many can only just stay alive. Death is coming closer and closer.”
The zoo was so short of funds that rare golden monkeys – one of China’s most treasured animals – were being fed only three types of fruit instead of the six varieties they should be given and the quality was very poor.
A senior zoo official said the bodies had been buried in the pit because the zoo could not afford to build an incinerator. The grave was regularly disinfected and the animals had died naturally of illness or old age, officials said.
Earlier this month a zoo in northeastern Shenyang was closed after 13 endangered Siberian tigers starved to death. Some newspapers said the animals may have been used to produce valuable tiger-bone liquor, much prized in China as a tonic to boost virility.
Additional support for that report came from a Chinese journalist who went undercover at the Harbin Siberian Tiger Park, where more than 1,000 of the animals have been bred in captivity, to investigate whether tiger-bone tonic was being sold illegally.
The journalist said he was offered tonic containing tiger bone at 2,800 yuan (£280) a bottle or without bone parts at 780 yuan (£78) a bottle. When he asked a zoo employee if the tonic was fake, he received the answer: “Why would we bother to sell fake tonic?The bodies of more than 30 animals, including rare white tigers and lions, that died... more
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DOHA, Qatar, March 17, 2010 (ENS) - "Porous borders" are allowing vendors in Myanmar to offer a door-to-door delivery service for illegal wildlife products such as tiger bone wine to buyers in China, finds the wildlife trade monitoring network TRAFFIC's latest look into China's wildlife trade.DOHA, Qatar, March 17, 2010 (ENS) - "Porous borders" are allowing vendors in... more
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Chinese animal rights groups recently launched an online campaign pushing for more protection of wild animals.
Despite the concern, consumers are still eager to get their hands on the illegal tonic wine.
"Tiger bone tonic wine will surely be popular this year," said a seller from the Beijing Xinghuo Company.
"Nothing could be better than sending it to your relatives or leaders during the Year of the Tiger, both for good wishes and to keep them healthy."
The company sells a wide range of wines, including a tiger bone tonic wine.
A 500 ml bottle of tiger bone wine, made in Heilongjiang province, sells for 1,380 yuan.
However, a bottle of tiger bone wine, said to be from Tongrentang, the place that supplied medicine to the royal pharmacy during the Qing Dynasty for 188 years, is even more expensive. Such wine, made in 1990s, sells for around 25,000 yuan.
The wine, which is believed to have medicinal properties, should improve with age, so the older the bottle, the higher the price. Those produced in the 1980s can sell for 60,000 yuan for 323 ml.
"Real tiger bone tonic wine is very popular in the market now," said Sjkexiao, a 20-year old man who was looking to sell two bottles online that he claimed was tiger bone wine made in Tongrentang in 1984.
He said tiger bone tonic wine had been increasing in price in recent years.
Tigers have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for centuries. Tiger bone tonic wine is used in the treatment of arthritis and rheumatism.
China joined the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1981. It imposed a ban on the harvesting of tiger bones and outlawed all trade in tiger body parts in 1993.
As a result, tiger bone remedies were removed from TCM dictionaries.
"Medicines with parts from rare animals are not allowed to be sold now," said a staff member, surnamed Zhang, at a Cachet pharmacy.
She suggested another medicinal wine, named Hongmao Medical Wine, that was priced at 250 yuan and which claimed to contain leopard bones.
"Money cannot buy a genuine bottle of tiger bone wine because of its scarcity," she said. "You can never find such medicine in the stores now. Wine containing real tiger bones is really more effective than others."
However, doctors were quick to question the medicinal value of tiger bone tonic.
"It is the same as other medicinal wines," said Yue Debo, a doctor with more than 20 years' experience in the department of orthopedics at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital. "It doesn't have any miraculous effect."
(Source: China Daily)
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/business/2010-03/01/c_13192700_2.htmChinese animal rights groups recently launched an online campaign pushing for more... more
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he first day of the major international conference on endangered species brought potentially good news for tigers. The World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies released a statement admitting that tiger bone doesn't offer some of the medicinal benefits attributed to it.
http://animals.change.org/blog/view/chinese_medicine_rejects_tiger_bone_remedieshe first day of the major international conference on endangered species brought... more
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This is a sad time in our modern history!
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