China is allowing the sale of tonic wine made using
tiger bones. The Drinks Business reported this week that the London-based Environment
Investigation Agency (EIA) has uncovered evidence of a legalised domestic trade
in captive-bred tiger products despite the fact that the practice has been
illegal in the country since 1993.
"The stark contradiction between China's
international posture supporting efforts to save the wild tiger and its
domestic policies which drive the poaching of wild tigers is one of the biggest
cons ever perpetrated in the history of tiger conservation,” Debbie Banks, head
of the EIA Tiger Campaign, told AFP.
The EIA report stated that traders are using
“secret” government notifications to legitimise the manufacture of tiger bone
wine. Believed to have medicinal properties in China, in the production of
tiger tonic wines, tiger bones and sometimes entire skeletons are left to soak
in the wine for varying lengths of time and then removed before bottling.
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| Tiger tonic wine |
The wines sell for £65-£500 a bottle depending
on how long the tiger bone was in contact with wine for. China is signed up to
the UN Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species that forbids
international commercial trade in tiger parts and derivatives. With over 200
tourist attraction tiger farms housing around 5,000 tigers, China has the
largest number of captive bred tigers in the world.
According to Banks, when the tigers die at the
farms, their bones are held back from the authorities when they visit to audit
the farms. In December 2011, the International Fund for
Animal Welfare applauded a Chinese government order that stopped the sale of
hundreds of bottles of tiger bone wine at an auction in Beijing.
Auction house Googut listed over 400 bottles of tiger bone wine from various traditional Chinese medicine manufacturers in an auction entitled “Bouncing Dragon, Jumping Tiger”. Tigers are a highly endangered species, with as few as 3,500 remaining in the wild. Despite this, tiger products are increasingly traded at auction in China, often disguised as “antiques” and “collectables”.
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