The Chinese city of #Shenzhen has passed a law completely banning all dog and cat meat in addition to other forms of more exotic wildlife, the sale of which has been prohibited in a new national regulation in #China following the #coronavirus emergency.

The #Shenzhen law stipulates heavy fines as punishment and appears to go further than the national regulation. The Humane Society said “the ban has been welcomed by long-time anti-dog meat trade campaigners... as a watershed moment in efforts to ban the trade across China”.

The Shenzhen law obviously also includes bats, pangolins and other wild animals already covered in the new national regulation. Thing is It goes further and bans the sale of dogs, cats and the like even if they’ve been bred for slaughter. #coronavirus #China #Covid19

However on the same day we find that bear bile has been approved for use with #China's critically ill #coronavirus patients. The National Health Commission has issued guidelines recommending the use of "tan re qing" which contains bear bile, goat horn and other medicinal herbs.

Apart from being extremely cruel to extract bile from bears it's also an utterly stupid treatment for #coronavirus patients given that there's zero proof bear bile has any medicinal value with #covid19 The Govt in #China is using the crisis to promote traditional Chinese medicine

BTW in terms of the new #Shenzhen law the way the government has gone about is - because there are so many animals in the world - instead of listing which animals you can’t eat, it has put out a “white list” of animals you can eat. So chicken, rabbit, pork etc. Everything else no