Police struggle to crack down on China's appetite for anything with four legs

SHANGHAI - In a country where many people live by the saying "eat anything with four legs that is not a chair", the police are battling back against smugglers transporting bear paws and other exotic delicacies on to China's dinner plates.

Officers made 20 arrests in a smuggling ring in southwestern Yunnan, seizing 278 bear paws and 416 armadillo-like pangolins, which had been brought by train from neighbouring provinces between December and January, the Yunnan Daily said.

The pangolins had been injected with tranquilisers to keep them quiet.

China is the world's top consumer of wildlife but has pledged to introduce sustainable trade in wild plants and animals. Its 1989 Wildlife Protection Law banned the consumption of internationally protected species, but it faces a difficult task.

It is not an unusual sight in the south to see live deer in a pen or crocodiles in a restaurant tank for diners. China's growing wealth means more banquets, which means more exotic wildlife on the menu, such as pangolins, bear paw and tiger. In southern China, for example, rare meat is called "ye wei" (wild taste), and people believe exotic food can endow you with bravery, long life or sexual prowess.

The common saying in northern China is that the Cantonese "eat anything that has four legs and is not a chair and anything that flies and is not an airplane".

Bear paws are used to treat everything from cancer to "general body weakness," arthritis and impotence.

Each bear paw sells in the markets of Shanghai for around $1000.

The animals are also prized for their bile, which is used in 123 kinds of Chinese medicines.

Pangolin meat sells for $400 a kilo and each animal yields up to five kilos, so a good size pangolin is worth $2000.

Its meat is considered highly nutritious, and its scales are prescribed for breast-feeding mothers, arthritis, asthma and for stopping infants dribbling.

One application is used for prostate cancer and another for haemophilia. Its urine also has medicinal purposes.

And it's not just food. Traditional Chinese medicine is undergoing a revival, as people turn to old-fashioned methods of healing as an alternative to the country's under-invested public health system.

A trip to a Chinese apothecary is a journey through drawer after drawer of exotic ingredients.

In the markets there are sections which look like petting zoos for exotic wildlife, including pangolin, civet cats and giant salamanders, although you have to be in the know to get access to them.

Among the unorthodox cures, by Western standards, are golden turtle's blood, which is used as a cure for cancer, sea horse to treat asthma, heart disease and impotence.

Rhino horn stops convulsions, pickled turtle flippers give longer life and fresh snake blood is a potent aphrodisiac. Eating owl is supposed to be good for the eyesight.

In restaurants, people often use code words to order the endangered species. Pangolin, for example, could be sold as mountain dragon or some other more common, exotic animal.

Trade in pangolin meat and freshwater turtles has taken over from extremely rare items such as tiger paw, rhino horn and the gall bladder of bears because of a crackdown in the trade of the endangered items in the Asia-Pacific region.

However, since the Sars outbreak, some Chinese diners have lost their taste for animals such as the civet cat, which was believed to be responsible for the initial flare-up of the disease in 2002, which killed 774 people.

There have been efforts to turn people off the desire for exotic wildlife, with television adverts featuring kung fu star Jackie Chan.

- INDEPENDENT