China Raises Insurance Plan For Pangolins By Getting Rid Of Scales From Drugs Listing

Pangolins – which are notoriously tricky to breed in captivity – have been in the spotlight since the outbreak of the Covid-19 outbreak, because of reviews suggesting they could also have been the intermediate host that transmitted the virus to people.

Of the two animals primary to naturally carry the Sars-CoV-2 virus – bats and pangolins – the latter is the most dangerous, both for its meat and for the scales that protect its body.

Neither has been positively identified due to the intermediate source that transferred the virus to humans, although a 100% identification may also prove elusive, according to consultants.

Since 1 January, when Chinese language authorities shut down the Wuhan moist market where the virus is suspected to have originated, no authentic details have been released about the selected flora and fauna found there.

What is time-honored is that out of the 33 samples taken at random from the market that confirmed positive for the Sars-CoV-2 virus, 31 had been from the area where wildlife was bought.

Pangolin meat is eaten by China's elite in the hope of health or sexual merits. However, TCM texts warn against consuming animals.

During the past five years more than 14,000 whole pangolins have been seized by customs brokers at border crossings in Asia. This is with 95% of the shipments of 21 animals or more.

This means a coordinated trafficking effort, which was compiled for the Guardian by C4ADS, a Washington, DC-based think tank that tracks illicit flora and fauna, drug and corruption networks.

Singapore's customs authorities seized 12.7 tones of pangolin scales, valued at $38m, in April 2019. They were in a container being shipped from Nigeria to Vietnam.

Since 2015, ninety-nine % of all total pangolin seizures – both alive and dead – have come about in Asia, with 24% of those at China’s borders, followed by a large variety of seizures in Vietnam and India, in response to C4ADS.

Many of these pangolins are being trafficked from Laos, Thailand, and India.

“Exceptionally, there was a significant drop in reporting on pangolin seizures when you consider that December 2019,” Amanda Shaver, a flora and fauna crime analyst with C4ADS, told the Guardian.

“Here's undoubted as a result of the accelerated media focal point and coverage on Covid-19, but our databases have not recorded a single seizure of complete pangolin in Asia in 2020.”

As for scale seizures, in the past 5 years, 32% of those had been at mainland China’s borders, although Hong Kong seizures accounted for 17%, based on C4ADS.

It's difficult to determine where they originated, but available facts show Nigeria (25%), Malaysia (17%), and Indonesia (12%) as excellent sources of scales.