South China’s taste for wildlife

Walter Parham

2nd August, 2008

Consuming endangered wildlife is illegal in China, but it continues on a large scale in the country’s south. Walter Parham reports on a habit that locals just cannot kick – even after the SARS crisis.

The destruction of south China’s wildlife habitats started about 1,000 years ago, and still continues today. This led to many animal extinctions and severe reductions in wildlife populations, and has been compounded by the use of wildlife for food and for ingredients in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM).

One might imagine that the pressure on wildlife would have decreased as levels of education and urban incomes have risen in the region. But the greatest reduction in wildlife consumption was actually in 2003, and came as a result of public fears about the risks of catching Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) from wild animals. In late 2004, the demand for civet cats decreased so much due to the fear of SARS that 141 farms released 4,000 of the animals into the wild. Bird flu later added to this concern.

Many Chinese people believe that eating wildlife is a bad habit, and some will even say it is barbaric, but the practice has persisted in China for around 2,000 years. A 2003 poll taken in Guangdong province found that half of the population had eaten wildlife, snake being named as the favourite of 45% of those...

To view the rest of this article - you must be a paying subscriber and Login