It’s early February two days before the Chinese New Year. I am in Hong Kong and there are shark fins everywhere, to suit all types of consumer. You can buy them in general food stores, pharmacies and fishing villages. You can buy small ones in plastic bags, multipacks or single large ones with festive red bows tied around them.
The cartilage in the fins is usually shredded and used primarily to provide texture and thickening to shark fin soup, a traditional Chinese soup or broth dating back to the Song Dynasty (960-1279). The dish is considered a luxury item embodying notions of hospitality, status and good fortune.
one of those things that's a delicacy simply because it's been around for ages
Demand in the Socialist Republic of Viet
Nam, a Southeast Asian nation of nearly
87 million people and the world’s 13th
largest nation, is believed to be driving
the rapacious illegal trade in rhino horn
today. As a new generation economic powerhouse,
Viet Nam’s increasingly politically-unfettered economy
is projected to be one of the world’s fastest
growing markets by 2025. Over the past decade,
unprecedented levels of disposable income and lax
government policy have awakened the trade in rhino
horn. At the same time, rapidly changing attitudes in
modern Viet Nam, where 65% of the population is
under the age of 30, are fuelling a booming market
for luxury products and giving rise to behaviour predicated
upon conspicuous consumption.
When the impoverished West African nation of Niger imposed a ban on donkey exports last year, a small community of traders just over the border in Nigeria was devastated.
“Before the ban, you could see thousands of donkeys here,” said Mohammed Sani, a 45-year-old trader in the Nigerian town of Jibiya, as he wiped the sweat off his brow. “Now look at them: there’s no more than 50, crippling the business.”
Donkey ski
Donkeys are being slaughtered at an alarming pace to feed a global trade in donkey hides that’s fueled by soaring demand in China, where the skins are used to manufacture a gelatin believed to have anti-ageing and libido-enhancing properties. The gelatin, known in China as e’jiao, is so popular with middle-class consumers that a Chinese producer has created a donkey exchange to help companies find enough hides to keep their factories busy.
With its large donkey population and close trade relations with China, Africa is a key target for donkey buyers. Annual global sales of the cooked gelatin may be worth as much as $2.6 billion, based on the 2014 per-kilogram sales price in China, according to the U.K.-based charity, The Donkey Sanctuary.
“The skin trade is really something that just came out of nowhere, and it’s the biggest, fastest crisis we’ve seen,” said Alex Mayers, a program manager at The Donkey Sanctuary. “People in poor communities can no longer replace donkeys if they’ve been stolen or slaughtered because the prices are just too high.”
Export Ban
Like the poaching of Africa’s rhinos and elephants, and deforestation caused by the largely illicit trade in rosewood timber, the slaughter of donkeys is an unforeseen consequence of rising Chinese incomes and an expanding middle class. While the global donkey population is estimated at 44 million, demand is currently thought to be at least 4 million per year, The Donkey Sanctuary said in a report this year.
Donkeys are essential to tens of millions of farmers in Africa’s driest regions, often also the most impoverished, and the skin trade is threatening to upset rural economies that rely heavily on the animals for transporting everything from produce to cattle feed.
“In Kenya, the net economic value of a working donkey is $2,300 a year. If you sell it for slaughter, you get a fraction of that: it will give you an income for a single month,” Mayers said. “A donkey is worth a hell of lot more alive than dead.”
That’s why Niger halted exports of the animal and completely prohibited their slaughtering after it found that donkey exports in the first nine months of 2016 had almost tripled compared to the whole of 2015. In neighboring Burkina Faso, the doubling of the price of a donkey and the slaughter of 45,000 donkeys out of a population of 1.5 million prompted the government in August last year to impose an export ban.
Mali, Senegal and Gambia followed suit. Zimbabwe, where donkeys are less common, turned down an application to build a donkey slaughterhouse, while Ethiopia closed its only functioning donkey abattoir after residents complained about the stench and pollution.
But large-scale slaughtering continues in many African countries, including Tanzania, Ghana and Kenya, and online sales ads for donkey hides are especially easy to find in Nigeria.
Packed Truck
Donkeys don’t reproduce easily and are difficult to breed commercially. “They’ve never been good at being a reproductive species,” Mayers said. “It’s not where their value lies.”
In Nigeria, some traders have turned to smuggling the animals from Niger. A trader-turned-smuggler said he was recently caught with five donkeys when trying to “sneak into” Nigeria. Border officials from Niger seized the animals and fined him the equivalent of $650, but he said he planned to stay in the trade because “it’s the only business I know.”
“Before the ban, I imported a truck packed with donkeys from Niger almost every week and sold them at $44 per donkey,” said the trader, whose full name was withheld because of fear of being caught. “Now, the price has risen to $150 or higher.”
Pangolins are indigenous to the jungles of Indonesia, parts of Malaysia and areas of southern Thailand, and their meat is considered a delicacy in China.
They are classified as a protected species under the UN's Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species and international trade in any Asian pangolin species is banned under the convention.
The shy pangolin's brown scales are made of nothing more than keratin—the same substance as fingernails—but are highly prized in Vietnam and China where they are misleadingly touted as bearing medicinal properties.
Soaring demand for the products has seen an estimated one million pangolins plucked from Asian and African forests over the past decade, shunting them onto the list of species at the highest risk of extinction.
Wildlife officials have said pangolins face a serious threat from poachers and smugglers in Southeast Asia with inadequate punishment and lack of information encouraging the burgeoning trade.
Malaysian customs officers have seized more than 700 kilograms of pangolin scales, the country's largest haul of the scales considered by some to have medicinal properties, officials said Monday.
The 712kg (1,570 pound) haul worth 9,184,800 ringgit ($2.12 million) was made last week in two separate seizures.
Every year, in Taiji, Japan, dolphins are chased into a small cove and butchered in the most horrific and cruel way imaginable. The hunts are subsidized by the dolphin captivity industry, which pays top dollar for a few “show quality” dolphins that are ripped from their families. The rest of the pod is killed for meat laden with mercury and PCBs. Most Japanese don’t even know the hunts exist. The Japanese government supports the dolphin killers and denies any health issues. The Taiji dolphin slaughter continues. The government claims the kills are part of Japan’s traditional culture when, in fact, they only started in 1969. Many Japanese who oppose the hunts are afraid to speak out publicly because of threats from the government and the extremist anti-foreigners groups. http://savedolphins.eii.org/campaigns/sjd
From the outside, it is not possible to know and comprehend the thinking of a people numbering some 48,000 persons. The best one can do is to listen to what individual members of the population say and read what the officials post in an effort to understand.
What we can all agree upon is that, in most years, Faroese people intentionally kill hundreds of pilot whales, dolphins, and other small cetaceans in the Faroe Islands. We can also agree that this slaughter has been going on for hundreds of years.
What we are unable to agree upon is why this slaughter occurs
Question: "Why did God require animal sacrifices in the Old Testament?"
Answer: God required animal sacrifices to provide a temporary covering of sins and to foreshadow the perfect and complete sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Leviticus 4:35, 5:10). Animal sacrifice is an important theme found throughout Scripture because “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness” (Hebrews 9:22). When Adam and Eve sinned, animals were killed by God to provide clothing for them (Genesis 3:21). Cain and Abel brought sacrifices to the Lord. Cain's was unacceptable because he brought fruit, while Abel's was acceptable because it was the “firstborn of his flock” (Genesis 4:4-5). After the flood receded, Noah sacrificed animals to God (Genesis 8:20-21).
God commanded the nation of Israel to perform numerous sacrifices according to certain procedures prescribed by God. First, the animal had to be spotless. Second, the person offering the sacrifice had to identify with the animal. Third, the person offering the animal had to inflict death upon it. When done in faith, this sacrifice provided a temporary covering of sins. Another sacrifice called for on the Day of Atonement, described in Leviticus 16, demonstrates forgiveness and the removal of sin. The high priest was to take two male goats for a sin offering. One of the goats was sacrificed as a sin offering for the people of Israel (Leviticus 16:15), while the other goat was released into the wilderness (Leviticus 16:20-22). The sin offering provided forgiveness, while the other goat provided the removal of sin.
Why, then, do we no longer offer animal sacrifices today? Animal sacrifices have ended because Jesus Christ was the ultimate and perfect sacrifice. John the Baptist recognized this when he saw Jesus coming to be baptized and said, “Look, the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). You may be asking yourself, why animals? What did they do wrong? That is the point—since the animals did no wrong, they died in place of the one performing the sacrifice. Jesus Christ also did no wrong but willingly gave Himself to die for the sins of mankind (1 Timothy 2:6). Jesus Christ took our sin upon Himself and died in our place. As 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Through faith in what Jesus Christ accomplished on the cross, we can receive forgiveness.
In summation, animal sacrifices were commanded by God so that the individual could experience forgiveness of sin. The animal served as a substitute—that is, the animal died in place of the sinner, but only temporarily, which is why the sacrifices needed to be offered over and over. Animal sacrifices have stopped with Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was the ultimate sacrificial substitute once for all time (Hebrews 7:27) and is now the only mediator between God and humanity (1 Timothy 2:5). Animal sacrifices foreshadowed Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf. The only basis on which an animal sacrifice could provide forgiveness of sins is Christ who would sacrifice Himself for our sins, providing the forgiveness that animal sacrifices could only illustrate and foreshadow.
The ancient religious injunction of animal sacrifice was a ritualized controlled way of producing a centralized slaughter of large animals for meat, so that people could eat the meat communally, because you couldn't refrigerate the meat, it would go bad.
So whether animals are slaughtered or not, the meaning is different today. In the religious rituals, it has no more significance than slaughtering and eating a chicken, except it must be done within the community, and there were rules for how the meat is to be divided up.
Modern religious slaughter is a vestige of this, as is modern ritual slaughter. It's not significant in a world with freezers full of meat. Islam allows the earning member of the family to sacrifice one animal, in remembrance of the sacrifices of Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham).
This practice is only bound on people of means, poor people can share one large animal for sacrifice.
The meat is to be used for feeding the poor, and yourself. Practices differ. In my house almost 90% of the animal is given away.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/grim-news-for-tigers-bears-as-china-wildlife-law-allows-farming-medical-use/2016/01/29/e991dde0-c5d7-11e5-b933-31c93021392a_story.html?utm_term=.3df5b39943bc More than 10,000 bears are also farmed, most kept in small cages, with their bile periodically — and painfully — extracted for use in household products and traditional Chinese medicine. Pangolins face extinctionbecause of their use in Chinese medicine.
Conservationists had hoped that the revised law, eagerly anticipated and years in the making, would put a stop to those practices and emphasize wildlife protection rather than commercial exploitation. Instead, they say, their pleas have been largely ignored, and they call the new law not just a missed opportunity but in many ways a step backward.
“China needs a wildlife protection law, not a wildlife utilization law,” said Iris Ho, of Humane Society International in Washington. “Legitimizing commercial breeding facilities that have no conservation benefit is akin to giving animal cruelty a stamp of approval.”
Grace Gabriel, Asia regional director for the International Fund for Animal Welfare, said wildlife farming in China was already stimulating demand, providing a cover for poaching and helping to wipe out many species in the wild. The revised law would exacerbate that situation, she added.
The appetite of Chinese consumers for endangered and threatened species is considered one of the greatest threats facing environmentalists and animal activists. Even Chinese diplomats have been accused of massive violations of laws protecting these species. As Chinese consumers acquire more disposable income, the demand for such products is increasing. The results are disgusting and no better example is the illegal production of Tiger wine, an aphrodisiac which sells for more than $500 a bottle. The wine is made from the bone of tigers who are raised in shocking conditions, including near starvation. The preference for exotic animals in the Chinese market has deep cultural roots. I have been to China and spoken with environmentalists who have bravely fought not just the government but this cultural insensitivity of such issues. They are incredible heroes in the environmental movement in facing not only government abuse but citizen abuse for resisting these cultural traditions. Across China, tigers are kept on “tiger farms” to supply Chinese men with the wine which they believe enhances their sexual prowess. There are an estimated 6000 tigers languishing in these farms. The bones are left soaking for eight years and then mixed with snake extract. The continued popularity of these products shows how the market rather than government regulations are controlling events. As I have previously discussed, I have personally seen the insatiable desire for these products. About 20 years ago, I was on a delegation to Taiwan and one of my areas of discussion was environmental protection. On the flight over to Taipei, our government sanctioned the Taiwan government for the sale of endangered species body parts in medicines and products. When I arrived, that is all the President and ministers wanted to discuss. They were quite angry and insisted that you could not buy such things as tiger bone on the island.
https://news.mongabay.com/2017/05/balinese-rituals-fuel-spike-in-trafficking-of-endangered-sea-turtles/ DENPASAR, Indonesia — A recent spate of busts has placed Bali in the spotlight once again as a key domestic market for endangered sea turtles. In February, Bali marine police officers confiscated 600 kilograms of butchered green turtle meat from a truck that had travelled from Madura Island to the resort enclave of Kuta. Last month, local news agency Detik reported that police had raided a warehouse in Gianyar, central Bali, where they discovered three green turtles, two of them still alive. In both instances police believed the turtles were being traded for their meat.
The Balinese have a special dispensation to use turtles in ceremonies, but they cannot exceed 40 centimeters in length and must be obtained from the Turtle Conservation and Education Center, which the WWF helped open in 2006. The new measures worked: “Our research shows that in the last 10 years, no more than 100 turtles have been requested for rituals annually and in 2015 the number was just 48,” Suprapti said.
But the recent busts seem to indicate a significant surge in turtle trafficking to Bali. Last year, the island’s marine police and regular police force recorded eight smuggling incidents accounting for 171 green turtles — the most since 2001. And at time of writing, 2017 has already seen eight busts, according to Permana Yudiarso, from the Office of Marine and Coastal Resources Management in Bali. It’s not clear to what extent the increase is related to religious ceremonies or consumption outside the ceremonial sphere. According to marine police commissioner Sukandar, turtle meat fetches between 5 million and 7 million rupiah ($375-525) per kilogram. It is usually consumed as sate — meat on a stick.
The two-day festival, called Gadhimai Mela Festival, takes place at the Gadhimai temple about 100 miles south of Kathmandu.
The festival is held every five years, during which hundreds of thousands of animals are killed in the name of the Hindu goddess of power. Devotees believe the ritual will bring them good luck.
The largest traditional animal sacrifice in the world is held in southern Nepal with an estimated 4,000 buffalo, goats, and pigeons slaughtered on one day alone.
In 2009, an estimated 350,000 animals were killed. Close to 500,000 animals were expected to be sacrificed this year, despite campaigns to ban the festival.
Millions of Hindus from all over India and Nepal participate in the festival to honor the Goddess Gadhimai, a Hindu deity who devotees believe will grant them wishes if they sacrifice animals and birds.
