In a hopeful step toward protecting wild animals and public health, China has removed the endangered pangolin from its official list of traditional medicines. The decision comes days after the country’s State Forestry and Grassland Administration (SFGA) increased the pangolin’s protection status to the highest possible level because of the creatures’ dwindling population.
Pangolins are the world’s most heavily-trafficked animal with around 200,000 poached annually. Their scales are extremely valuable in China’s lucrative black market due to their supposed medicinal qualities, despite scientists affirming that there is currently no known medical benefit.
Holding pangolins captive could be dangerous to human health, as well. Some researchers think the coronavirus may have transmitted to its first human host via a pangolin. More generally, the ongoing global COVID-19 crisis is thought to have originated at a ‘wet market’ in Wuhan, China, drawing widespread attention to the dangers of the live animal trade, which unavoidably brings humans and animals within unnaturally close proximity.
China’s decision to upgrade pangolins’ protection status and remove them from its list of traditional medicines is the latest in a series of legislative moves responding to the current pandemic, including a nationwide ban on the wild animal trade and the government offering to buy out wild animal farmers and transition to plant-based farming.
This is a monumental step in a more humane direction, but truly ending the cruel pangolin trade, which continues despite the ban, remains an uphill battle. Lady Freethinker applauds China’s efforts, but more must be done to protect these innocent creatures.
What’s New…
They are liars!
Il serait temps que ces barbares évoluent!!!!!
Well said, Madame!
MALHEUREUSEMENT IL Y A TOUJOURS DES BRACONNIERS PRÊTS A TOUT POUR GAGNER UN PEU D’ARGENT SUR LE DOS DES ÊTRES VIVANTS EN DIFFICULTÉ !!!!!!!
LEUR EXTINCTION NE LEUR POSE AUCUN SOUCIS !!!!!!!
QUE LE PANGOLIN SOIT VRAIMENT PROTÉGÉ !!!!!!!!
IL A ASSEZ SOUFFERT !!!!!
QUE LES AUTRES ANIMAUX AUSSI SOIENT SAUVES DE CETTE MÉDECINE DIABOLIQUE !!!!!
Tu as bien raison. Les Chinois se fout completement des animaux. Le plus de souffrance, le plus d’argent, le plus de satan.
Yes, more does need to be done to protect these innocent creatures.
These morons ought to be hanged upside down let the fire ants 🐜 crawl on these people NO MERCY!
They deserve it! Animals should be left alone regardless especially their habitats!
NO ANIMAL ON THIS PLANET SHOULD BE USED ABUSED FOR ANY MEDICINAL PURPOSES FOR HUMANS !!!!
Don’t believe it!
Very ignorant and archaic ideas to think that animal parts can be used for medicinal purposes. Just use God’s natural herbs that He has provided us instead of senselessly murdering innocent animals for those witch doctor-like concoctions that don’t even work. I hope China will truly go forward with this ban because I just have such a hard time believing in their word. Please also work on banning other animal parts used in those voodoo rituals disguised as “medicine”.
Good move. But now what about bear bile? Bears suffer horribly their entire lives without being able to move in their cages, or escape the pain of the metal pipes driven into their bile ducts to drain the liquid.
Why aren’t they stopping this abominable practice?
Ignorant Chinese again, finally the penny drops
They’ve got to make that retarded barbarian people disappear from the face of the earth. Maybe medicine can be made from their parts!
Why test anything on animals? Poor innocent, defenseless animals.
Let’s hope they stick to this.
It’s the 21st Century – ALL animals need to be taken off traditional medicine.
Great news, thank you 🙂
better late than never
the chinese and most of those countries in the far east have a long way to go on the road to humane treatment of all life..
as well as here at home in the good Ol U S of A
This wonderful news
ONE GREAT STEP; many many more to go; it is a shameful disgrace that this practice of witchcraft is even remotely correlated to medicine.
This is so pathetic for some people to think & act while brain washing the backward dumb people to believe in, that the Pangolins are a medicinal product.
It is time to educate the sub cultural rural people that every animal is not being on this planet for their consumption. These Animals also have a life to live & to enjoy their own lives as they were being born into…as same as the people do.
(“Education is the Most Powerful Weapon which you can use to change the world” – Nelson Mandela—)
I have to believe that this ban will be enforced. Greed, deception and corruption seem to be the decease to be ban in China.
News Flash! Chinese human finger and toe nails and eyeballs cure cancer and make men sexually potent, and there is an unlimited number of them available!
Debra, love your comment, but don’t forget the diseased human scrotum sac, along with the flaccid penile tissue…all as a result of eating tortured animals.
Once again, I’ll only believe this when it actually happens, when the government and police actually enforce this current statement. No doubt, along with the abuse, torture, killing and eating of dogs and cats and all other species, will continue behind closed door, fueled by the black market and scrupulous dealers and traders.
Pangolins are beautiful sentient peaceful animals, it is just truly sickening and disgusting what human beings do to these beautiful creatures. I hope every human being who has hurt and tortured and killed a Pangolin Burns in hell and are tortured for eternity by pangolins
China has taken pangolins off their medicinal list? What the hell does that mean? China is chocked full of liars and deceivers, and we’re suppose to believe them? I think not! Keep your eyes open for China’s tricks and games.
I agree Barbara 100%
That China has taken pangolins off the traditional “medicine” list is such welcome news!. Let’s hope others will follow – if it’s not too late already to save this highly endangered species. Hopefully, this will be a first step to the ending of using animal body parts, such as lion bone and rhino horn, for scientifically debunked “medicine”, leading to the shutting down of big cat farms in South Africa, the horrendous slaughter of donkeys and other related practices. Thank you, China, for beginning such an important process. We applaud this and future actions.
I wonder how effective this ban will be?
I am so happy about this!! None of that chinese medicine works anyway and it’s only little dick syndrome (impotence) that keeps them thinking it does! They not only slaughter pangolins, but sharks for their fins, rhinos for their horns, tigers for their bones and bear for their bile. Most of the 36 animals they kill are endangered species! And they only use the parts they need for their “medicine” and waste the rest of the animal.
Now we have to teach the people who farm them for money, they are greedy.
You knew a virus was getting out of hand & you held a huge banquet to get in the book of world records & you didn’t give a damn about unleashing a deadly disease onto the entire World, worsened by a total incompetent in the White House. Way too little. Way too late. This is excellent news about the Pangolin though. If you are really sorry you stop doing it so maybe it’s a step in the right direction.
Well China, this is a step in the right direction!! It’s so nice to hear promising news for once. I will never understand why people put stock in carotin as a healing property for, ummm, ANYTHING!! Chew on your fingernails, and suck on your hair if you think carotin will cure your erectile disfuntion!!! Now we need to end the disgusting Yulin dog, and cat meat festival, and all wet markets, everywhere, and celebrate vegetables, and then, maybe, I’ll bust out the celebratory bubbly!!