(China)Restaurants 'feed' tigers - to patrons

[Guest guest]

http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,5754542%255E13762,00.html

 

Restaurants 'feed' tigers - to patrons

December 27, 2002

 

ONE hundred rare Bengal tigers donated by Thailand to China for

conservation have arrived amid an uproar over media reports they will be

bred instead as meat for Chinese restaurants.

 

Officially, the tigers, which arrived via jumbo jet on Christmas Day on

the southern island of Hainan, were contributed by a Thai zoo for a

Sino-Thai research program and possible reintroduction into a Chinese

nature reserve.

 

But at least three reports in newspapers said the big cats were to be

raised like cattle for sale as meat.

 

One report, by the Nanjing-based Jiangnan Times, said Hainan will build

a wild animal park called " Love World, " where visitors could sample

tiger meat after seeing the cats in wild settings.

 

" This is a totally baseless rumour. Selling tiger meat is illegal, and

we would never do it, " a government official in Sanya, the city where

the cats will be bred, said today. He would give only his family name,

Du.

 

Du said the cats, which arrived in separate wooden crates on a Boeing

747, are part of a project to replenish their number in China and study

mating habits.

 

He said another 400 to 500 tigers will be bred over the next five years

at a forest research center near Sanya. Then some could be released in a

nature reserve yet to be created somewhere in China's south.

 

He said the city planned to take good care of the tigers, even flying in

20 tonnes of frozen chicken meat from northern China to feed them.

 

Du and other officials said the project was intended to be

self-supporting. But they declined to say how the research centre was

supposed to pay for itself.

 

The tigers came from Si Racha Tiger Farm in Thailand, and Thai experts

accompanied them to China, Du said.

 

It is not unusual to see parts of rare or endangered animals for sale in

China, either as food or as traditional medicine. Tiger bones are prized

as a cure for rheumatism, and tiger penis soup is considered an

aphrodisiac.

 

Bengal tigers, which once ranged from India through southern China to

Siberia, are listed as endangered by the US government, and their trade

is banned by international treaty.

 

As few as 5,000 remain in the wild, according to the US Fish and

Wildlife Service.

 

A report today in the newspaper Shanghai Youth Daily said China would

try to get UN approval to sell the tigers as meat.

 

The reports brought a shower of angry calls from central government

officials in Beijing demanding an explanation.

 

A manager at a city-owned company set up to manage the tigers, Sanya

Maidi Creations, said he spent hours telling officials in Beijing that

no employees had spoken to reporters. The manager, who would give only

his surname, Yang, called the newspaper reports fabrications.

 

The reports also prompted outraged comments on Internet chat rooms.

 

While the government requires online services to censor such postings

for political content, they are one of the few outlets for public

sentiment in a communist system where other media are propaganda organs.

 

" If this is supposed to be a way of preserving the tiger, will we soon

be eating panda as well? " asked one user on sina.com.cn, who used the

name 218.14.43.

 

The Associated Press