Society

Noted authors urge resistance to wildlife dishes

By Liang Chao (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-02-02 21:00

More than 100 noted Chinese authors swore to stay away from restaurants that serve wild animals as meals.

At a ceremony on Feb 2 in Beijing, writers including Zhang Kangkang and Zhao Danian signed a big banner supporting the proposal, which was made by the China Wildlife Conservation Association (CWCA), the country's leading wildlife protector.

"We need support from the entire society," Li Qingwen, CWCA's vice-secretary-general, said. "The move by these renowned authors would greatly push our wildlife protection forward with wildlife dishes permanently removed from menus."

Eating dishes made of wild animals used to be prevalent in some parts of China, especially South China's Guangdong province, as locals believe that wildlife has high nutritional and tonic value.

According to experts with CWCA, it still goes on often enough in China to cause rampant hunting and capture of wildlife and smuggling of some wild animals.

This, they warned, would endanger some species of the country's wildlife, such as snakes and monkeys, and consequently damage ecosystems.

Since 2002, CWCA has collected signatures from eight million cooks across the country for its "No cooking precious, rare wildlife" campaign, which urges people not to prepare dishes containing animals on the government's protection list.