BEIJING • China has removed pangolin parts from its official list of traditional medicines, state media reported on Tuesday, days after increasing legal protection for the endangered animal.
Pangolins were left out of the official Chinese Pharmacopoeia this year, along with substances such as a pill formulated with bat faeces, the state-owned Health Times reported.
The pangolin, the world’s most heavily trafficked mammal, is thought by some scientists to be the possible host of the coronavirus that emerged from a market in the Chinese city of Wuhan last year.
Its body parts fetch a high price on the black market as they are commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine, although scientists say they have no therapeutic value.
China’s forestry authority last Friday gave pangolins the highest level of protection in the country due to their threatened status. “Depleted wild resources” are being withdrawn from the Pharmacopoeia, Health Times reported, although the exact reason for the removal of pangolins was unclear.
China has in recent months banned the sale of wild animals for food, citing the risk of diseases spreading to humans, but the trade remains legal for other purposes – including research and traditional medicine.
The World Wide Fund for Nature last Saturday said it “strongly welcomed” China’s move to upgrade protections for the pangolin, calling it an “important respite” from the illegal pangolin trade.
China issued a ban on pangolin hunting in 2007, and has suspended all commercial imports of pangolin and its products since 2018.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, XINHUA
The World Wide Fund for Nature last Saturday said it “strongly welcomed” China’s move to upgrade protections for the pangolin, calling it an “important respite” from the illegal pangolin trade.
