Article: Please don't eat these animals

By Azrina Abdullah February 03, 2009 Categories: News

One man’s meat is another man’s nightmare. While conservationists are battling the depleting population of wildlife owing to habitat and climatic changes, poachers are relentless in their money-making pursuit of supplying exotic meat to grace dining tables.

And this Chinese New Year season, Traffic Southeast Asia, the wildlife trade monitoring network, is appealing to those who come across such offers of “delicacies” to refrain from eating them and instead report the matter to the enforcement authorities.

Pangolin stew, turtle soup and braised bear’s paws are not officially on the menu but they are the “trendy” dishes being offered.

The Malayan pangolin (also known as Sunda pangolin) was, in October last year, put under the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of endangered species. Last month, a report warned that “the Malayan Box Turtle is disappearing across Malaysia”, despite a ban on its export in 2005. ( http://www.iucn.org/about/work/programmes/species/red_list/?2520 )

By being aware of what one consumes and saying “No” to such wildlife meat dishes, one can avoid having a detrimental impact on depleting wildlife species, which are under pressure of over-exploitation.

As for other traditional Chinese New Year fare, potential consumers have been advised to either refrain or to be very discerning in their purchases.

Endangered Species

• Abalone – Stocks have plummeted in South Africa where almost all the abalone harvested is exported to East Asia. Continued illegal harvesting and trade is affecting the survival of the species, and could result in the closure of legal fisheries and the loss of hundreds of jobs. If purchasing, make sure the abalone has been legally sourced before buying.

• Shark’s fin – There are over 400 species of sharks worldwide and 83 species are listed as either critically endangered, endangered or vulnerable at the global or regional level. Finning, which involves cutting the fins and generally throwing the rest of the shark back into the sea, is widely practised. The international trade in sharks’ fins is placing severe pressures on slow-growing and vulnerable shark populations, which may decline past critical thresholds.

• Sea cucumber — Buy very carefully as, in general, sea cucumbers are easily overfished and need much greater levels of management around the world.

• Facai moss (Flagelliform nostoc) – Don't buy this “facai,” a black, hair-like moss used in a variety of dishes in the belief that it will increase the wealth of those who eat it as it sounds the same as “get rich” in Cantonese. China outlawed the sale of facai in 2000; any available on the market is illegal. However, artificial facai can be a good alternative.

• “Health” tonics containing endangered species – Tonics containing endangered species such as wild ginseng, Asian freshwater turtles, seahorses, saiga antelope, pangolins, geckos, tigers, amongst others, are often consumed for Chinese New Year. All of these species are subject to overexploitation and uncontrolled trade. With only around 5,000 tigers left in the wild, all international trade of tiger products is illegal, thus wines or tonics containing tiger bone are strictly prohibited.

This article was taken from: the malay mail: news 3 february 2009