China’s return to wildlife farming ‘a risk to global health and biodiversity’
An update to China's Wildlife Protection Law has now eased restrictions on the farming of wildlife. Under the new law, the farming of wildlife doesn’t need regulatory approval, you just need to register.
GUARDIAN STAFF: China appears to be weakening its post-Covid restrictions on the farming of wildlife such as porcupines, civets and bamboo rats, which raises a new risk to public health and biodiversity, warn NGOs and experts.
Before the pandemic, wildlife farming was promoted by government agencies as an easy way for rural Chinese people to get rich. But China issued an outright ban on hunting, trading and transporting wildlife, as well as the consumption as food, after public health experts suggested the virus could have originated from the supply chain. Around 14 million people worked in the wildlife farming industry before the Covid restrictions, with the industry worth an estimated 520bn yuan (£60bn).
The ban covers almost 1,800 animals with important ecological, economic and social values – known as the “three values”. This included hedgehogs, raccoon dogs, civets, wild boars, porcupines and bamboo rats. Yet the consumption of wildlife as food has been lying in a grey area, say experts, with authorities admitting that current regulations aren’t clear enough.
Not long after the ban, wildlife breeding centres across China were ordered to shut, cutting off the primary source of income for millions of farmers. Yet farmers could still captively breed a smaller number of exempted animals on the banned list including silver foxes and raccoon dogs if they obtained a government-approved licence.
While regulations do ban eating species from unlawful sources or under protection, they do not say whether the “eating of animals with the three values or other terrestrial wildlife not under a specific type of protection is legal or not. This creates a loophole,” said Yang Heqing, a National People’s Congress official.
A more recent update to the Wildlife Protection Law has now eased restrictions on the farming of wildlife, claim NGOs and experts. “Under the second draft, the farming of wildlife with the three values doesn’t need to get approved. You just need to register. And if something goes wrong, you’ll only need to rectify the problem within a given period of time,” said a public statement from the Shan Shui Conservation Center, a Chinese NGO dedicated to species and ecosystem conservation.
“We worry that such changes will weaken the supervision and protection of animals with the three values, thus impacting wild populations,” the statement added. The more recent update has also removed the phrase “preventing public health risks”, weakening the link between protecting wildlife and safeguarding public health, say NGOs.
“The best way to truly safeguard public health is to let wildlife stay where they are supposed to be, which is their natural habitat,” said the Chinese wildlife conservation volunteer group Anti-Poaching Crime Squad in a statement on WeChat. “Any attempts to farm, breed, buy or sell and utilise them, especially by eating them, will only increase public health risks”. SOURCE…
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