Thursday, August 16, 2012

23 Reasons Animal Lovers Should Boycott China - Reason #12: China Supports Slaughter of Elephants for Ivory


Chinese demand for ivory drives the slaughter of thousands of elephants each year for their tusks


[When I started this blog in 2008, my first post was about a dog who was chained inside a gallery and starved as part of an "artwork." Since then, animal welfare has remained a primary theme on 13.7 Billion Years. Over the years, I have learned about countless stories of animal cruelty here in the United States and across the world. But one country has shown the most blatant and widespread disregard for the lives and well-being of non-human animals: China. As Mahatma Gandhi wisely observed, "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way in which its animals are treated." If China is to become a great nation, it has a lot of work to do. One way concerned people can help put pressure on China to change is to stop buying Chinese goods. More than 2.3 million people worldwide have signed the Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare, and the number of animal lovers around the globe is much greater. Imagine if all of them stopped purchasing Chinese products. So, every weekday for the month of August, I'll give animal lovers one reason to boycott China—23 reasons in all. It will not be an easy month to digest all the horrific stories and cruel practices. But I have placed great value in a quote by the late philosopher Albert Schweitzer: "Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight." This month, I'll be doing that, and I hope you will too. -- Reynard Loki]

"China is the only country…that allows internal ivory trade under a control system," but "failed to effectively police the system and track the sale of legally-imported ivory," according to a WWF report of 23 African and Asian countries that have the highest level of illegal ivory trade, reports the Global Times.

"Chinese collectors and investors [consider] ivory products as 'white gold' and believe that ivory can help with exorcising evil spirits," said a representative from the WWF Beijing Office. "Ivory is also a traditional medicine, which provides another incentive for Chinese buyers."

"An estimated 23,000 elephants were illegally slaughtered in 2006 simply so the ivory can be ripped from their jaws and sold on the black market," according to Spiegel Online.

The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) 2011 survey of China's ivory markets discovered that the trade in illegal ivory was happening in legal facilities, most of which "violated the system in some way to launder illegal ivory."

"The existence of a legal ivory market [in China] provides loopholes for smuggled ivory, because retailers can smuggle ivory under the cover of the legal domestic market," said He Yong, a spokesman for the China branch of IFAW.

"China has historically been a significant destination for illicit trade in ivory and was identified as the single most important influence on the increasing trend in illegal trade in ivory since 1995," according to IFAW, which notes that since an ivory product can sell for as much as 5 million yuan ($785,400) at auction, more retailers are lured into the ivory trade.

ACTION ALERTS
  • Sign a Born Free Foundation petition to increase the protection of elephants from the bloody ivory trade
  • Sign a Griddix petition urging U.S. President Barack Obama and President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso to officialy ask to the Chinese government to stop the brutal practice of eating dog meat and to immediately end the terrible tortures to which dogs are subjected in China
  • Sign a Change.org petition urging Nestle Purina to recall chicken jerky treats made in China
  • Sign a Care2 petition urging Chinese president Hu Jintao to stop killing endangered species
  • Sign a Change.org petition to stop the sale of "living keychains"
  • Sign a Care2 petition asking the Chinese government to ban shark finning
  • Sign PETA's Pledge to Be Fur-Free
  • Sign a ForceChange petition to protect threatened populations of Asian musk deer
  • Sign a Care for Chinese Animals petition to ban dog and cat meat in China
  • Join Bill Clinton, Paul McCartney, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Bono, Ricky Gervais, Roger Moore, Susan Sarandon, Anjelica Huston, Jeremy Irons, Paula Abdul, Joan Jett, Annie Lennox, Elton John and thousands of others who have signed the TigerTime petition urging Chinese premier Wen Jiabao to call for an end to all tiger trade in China
  • Sign a Change.org petition to close China's bear bile farms
  • Sign the Universal Declaration on Animal Welfare (UDAW)
  • Follow 13.7 Billion Years on Twitter
23 REASONS ANIMAL LOVERS SHOULD BOYCOTT CHINA
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image: Chinese demand for ivory drives the slaughter of thousands of elephants each year for their tusks. (http://www.piaberrend.org/elephants/)
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