Fouled Up: An Eyewitness Look at China's Environment. Part 2: Eating
Endangered Species
July 20, 2006
02:09:49 pm, Categories: Environment, 559 words
Fouled Up: An Eyewitness Look at China's Environment. Part 2: Eating
Endangered Species
In a July 7 blog post, I wrote about the health effects from
environmental pollution, which constitute one by-product of China's
headfirst dive into modernization. The other that came to mind during my
visit is also not news, but it is eye opening nonetheless: the
conservation of endangered species, or the lack thereof. Sure, China
does much to maintain its national natural treasure, the giant panda.
But other endangered wildlife is still being killed off. Habitat loss is
a major culprit, of course. But the cause that is most evident to a
tourist is the menu.
Compared with a typical Western market, the Asian market consists of a
much greater variety of food that previously walked, swam or crawled.
That is especially the case in southern China--the joke that I have
heard is that the Cantonese will eat anything with four legs except a
table. A seafood restaurant in Jiangmen, a small city northwest of Macau
in Guangdong province, offered not just alligators and slugs, but sea
turtle as well. (I could not identify the species, but perhaps an astute
reader can from the photo I took.)
http://static.flickr.com/63/194276539_980988891c.jpg
sea turtle
Maybe the Chinese people do know and care about the importance of
conservation--one person thought that the sea turtles, which are all
endangered, were farmed. But that doesn't seem to be the case
considering the popularity of shark-fin soup. (Shark populations are
endangered, threatened or under pressure; a restaurat might say that it
uses only the dorsal fin and that the shark is thrown back, but a shark
cannot survive without the appendage.) Shark-fin soup notwithstanding,
most endangered animals are eaten not because they taste good, but
because they supposedly impart some benefit to one's health or libido.
The sea turtles I saw were still in the tank the next day. At the price
of 168 RMB (about US$21) per kilogram, they were probably out of the
price range for many locals. But China has enough new wealth that I
doubt the sea turtles remained alive for long.
I had hoped that pharmaceutical science might help alleviate pressure on
species destruction. After all, Viagra works, rhino horn does not.
William von Hippel of the University of New South Wales and Frank von
Hippel of the University of Alaska in Anchorage raised the possibility
in 2002, when they noted a drop in the sale of seal genitals and
reindeer velvet-both used as aphrodisiacs in Asia. An economic downturn
in the region, rather than Viagra sales, may better explain the decline,
although in a survey last year, the von Hippel brothers found that
Chinese men would choose Viagra over traditional prescriptions.
That's good news--the bad news is that impotence constitutes only a
small fraction of the conditions that are treated by traditional Chinese
medicines. The eyes, whiskers, bones and other parts of the tiger, for
instance, supposedly treat insomnia, malaria, meningitis, rheumatism and
other ailments. So it's unlikely that impotence drugs could put more
than a dent in illegal trade and poaching.
The Chinese government has banned the use of tiger parts in medicine and
makes it an offense to wear tiger-derived jewelry. But it's also
fighting culture and its attendant inertia. As the country develops and
people get richer, they will be able to afford more luxuries and may
insist on millennia-old prescriptions of questionable efficacy. That
does not bode well for species survival in China.
http://blog.sciam.com/index.php?title=fouled_up_an_eyewitness_look_at_china_s_2&more...
Copied from "Scientific American"
