Tiger Farms

Are tiger farms bad? If we stand back and just get a gut feel for this question, a lot (a majority, I would say) of us would think tiger farms are hideous. How can we take the most popular wild animal in the world and farm it!? How can we turn such a proud and precious animal into farm livestock? It sounds disgusting. "To me it is disgusting," Valmik Thapar (a prominent conservationist) thunders. "It's not civil to have tiger farms; it's not part of anyone's dream." (I have quoted Mr Thapar and I am sure he will allow it).

But if we put away all sentiment it could be argued that tiger farms are a good idea at least on first impressions.

Farms like these are selling tiger bone wine and other products. The photograph (which I have selectively cropped), is by International Tiger Coalition. People are free to use this image on condition that they provide a credit. I can feel the stress these tigers are feeling cooped up like this, wholly unnaturally.

If the tiger has been poached to extinction (nearly) or its habitat and prey eroded to the point where it shares land with people to the demise of the tiger and a few people, then tiger farms are one way, on the face of it, to reduce poaching and preserve this big cat in the wild. And the unsentimental will say, "what is the difference between a tiger and a rabbit?" Both are wild animals and both are used for the pleasure of mankind, in one way or another. So why aren't we shouting from the rooftops about the rabbit or the horse, which is eaten by some people.

The reason why a gut feel is, in fact, the right feel is because tiger farms are a complete fraud and a sham. If they are meant to be a means to help preserve the wild tiger, they don't work. It is even more basic than that, it is simply about money, nothing else, making money from tigers in a cruel and uncaring way.

One reason why they are a sham, and dangerous to the wild tiger and not a benefit to them, is because the people who own and run these farms are lobbying the authorities (presumed CITES - Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) to allow tiger parts from the farms to be traded (in breach of CITES currently). If that is allowed, it is argued that, the trade in tiger parts will be encouraged and expanded and muddied up at a time when it is most critical and important for there to be a tightening up of CITES restrictions and not a loosening up.


Tiger Farms - Photo by International Tiger Coalition and thanks to Big Cat Rescue for showing these pictures on their website.

Here are some other reasons why tiger farms are bad:

• 5,000 live tigers are kept on tiger farms in China. There are about 4,000 (the figure is not certain) in the wild and 12,000 in the USA as "pets". The photograph below shows us how these farm tigers are treated at the end of their lives in very limited captivity:

Tiger Farms - Photo by International Tiger Coalition (cropped)

Yes I know we are disgusted by this image, those of us who have retained a sense of what is right. What you are looking at is the most popular wild animal in the world reduced to trash and meat, chilled flesh and bone, bereft of dignity. The owner of this farm was keeping what was left of the tiger bodies (you can see one has been skinned) until it becomes legal to trade in body parts. And CITES had asked, formally, China to investigate illegal sales of tiger meat at the Guilin farm. What is CITES doing asking China to investigate? This is preposterous. It is like asking the police to investigate an assault perpetrated by an officer on duty. Do we ever get a result from such an investigation? No. It is like the kind of investigation carried out by the Financial Securities Agency (FSA) in the UK (charged with monitoring the bankers) in investigating financial frauds -- forget it. It does not work. There is not enough independent and neutral control and management.

And it really is about attitude. I have yet to see someone talk about the attitude of people who find doing what is illustrated normal and acceptable. Surely this is at the root of the problem. Some people (sadly a lot of these people are in an area which is near where the tiger's habitat is) just find it acceptable to treat tigers as livestock. Actually, it is worse than that, you wouldn't treat livestock in some countries as the tiger is treated on tiger farms. I am sure that if a health and safety official visited a farm in the UK and found cattle lying around like these dead and mutilated tigers, he or she would make a formal complaint. So I conclude that the Chinese people involved in this business (not all Chinese please note - I don't want someone saying that I am racist, I am not) think of tigers as livestock on a farm. Many millions of people in the west think of tigers differently. And allowing tigers to be farmed will simply perpetuate this outdated and outmoded attitude.

The only long term answer is to educate and change attitudes and that will require the agreement of the Chinese government. To get their agreement there has to be a financial reward. The loss of the tiger in the wild is a world problem. The tiger belongs to the world and the world must find a way to save this animal.

The overriding problem, though, is that the majority of the people of the world do not know about this or if they do, they don't care sufficiently. How many people know about tiger farms? How many people ask whether tiger farms are bad? Lets guess, 2 million in the world. That represents 0.033 percent of the world's population, an infinitesimal amount and of no consequence. People generally, globally simply do not know or care enough to change things. And I am not being critical. It is just human nature.

It is shocking to realize that, "The 171 member nations of CITES made it clear last month that ‘tigers should not be bred for their parts and derivatives.'” The Chinese tiger part dealers are particularly bothered about this statement, are they? No. Some say that the Chinese have banned (in line with CITES) tiger body parts, but I for one don't believe it. The body parts of wild tigers are still being traded because no one is enforcing the CITES ban and there is too much money in the trade, which becomes more valuable as the tiger becomes rarer. Another factor: it costs 250 times more to raise a tiger in captivity than it does to poach a wild tiger. Killing wild tigers is more economically viable.


Tiger Farms - Photo by International Tiger Coalition

OK, what else is bad about tiger farms?:

1. Chinese tiger farmers say they are making a loss. This is because of the 14-year ban on domestic and international trade in tiger body parts. They want to open trade again. Question: how have they stayed in business for 14 years if they are making a loss? And if they started up within the past 14 years why did they go into the business if it was loss making. We don't believe this kind of comment do we?
2. Look at the pictures of the tigers waiting to be killed for their body parts. How do you think they feel? They are very static, very hot. They live in very small spaces. A tigers natural home range is 7-58 square miles - src: http://www.seaworld.org. This is torture waiting for (probably) a brutal death to be cut up and parts sold for the ridiculous Chinese medicine market. Why people in this day and age harbour medieval thoughts that a bit of a tiger can cure you of an illness is beyond me.
3. Apparently the owners of these farms show compassion for people who come to the tiger farms seeking and pleading to buy tiger bone to cure rheumatism. The tiger farm owners say they must reluctantly turn them away because of the restriction on trade. I guess the tiger farm owners don't tell them that tiger bone does not cure rheumatism and that it is all hocus pocus.
4. There is no need for original animal body parts in Chinese medicine. There are effective (probably far more effective than the tiger part which cannot be effective at all) substitutes. There is no need to treat tigers like this.
5. The farms sell tiger bone wine and tiger meat even. This is hideous and has nothing to do with conservation of the tiger, it is plain callous commercialization of an highly endangered animal.
   

I have to quote John Stellar, CITES's enforcement chief: "Wild tigers are about to go down the toilet, and we don't seem to be doing anything about it. The international community has been pouring money into this, and we have failed." As I have said we need a completely different attitude and really we need to shut down all Chinese tiger farms. CITES can't do this. No one can except the Chinese government and they are a very cynical government and will never do anything that undermines their power. Upsetting business undermines their power base. And tiger farms are big business. The problem should be tackled from a business perspective.


Tiger Farms - Save me please - Photo by International Tiger Coalition.

On the basis, as mentioned, that the tiger belongs to the world (and not humans) and its extinction in the wild is a world problem, I suggest this as a solution to the tiger farms problem:

1. Provide China with some sort of political incentive to close tiger farms. America is talking to China currently on economic matters, why can't the tiger be brought into the discussions?
   
2. The major nations of the world pool resources, including China, to recompense those businesses who are involved in the tiger body parts trade when the trade is shut down. The Chinese must shut this trade down but to make it palatable there has to be compensation.
3. In tandem with this there should be a nationwide program of education in China initially on alternatives to ingredients to Chinese medicine along the lines promulgated in the west. There are effective substitutes for all the tiger body parts that are used in "medicine".
   
4. As to skins etc. there is no short cut here. The traders should be compensated and retrained once trade is banned with proper enforcement. There is arguably a need for a world enforcement team along the lines of the UN.
   

UPDATE

It is April 2021, quite a few years after I wrote this article (March 2009) and tiger farms have got worse as we would expect because China is very industrious at whatever they do. The demand for tiger body parts is bound to grow therefore they need more tigers to slaughter like livestock to supply the body parts. 

Incidentally, a bit of good news but only very incidentally to the main topic: China's human population is stagnating. Their citizens are not having babies despite the government's attempts to encourage them to have families. The one child policy has long been removed and now they can have 2 children but citizens are not taking up the offer. This means the demand for tiger body parts might level off and stabilise but perhaps I am being overly optimistic.

It is said that today, in 2021, China's tiger farms have turned a wild animal into a species worth more dead than alive. Tigers are reduced to living in just 6% of their former distribution and they've become more valuable as livestock and to be slaughtered than to watch them and admire them in the wild. China has reduced them to that status in my honest opinion. But other countries also have tiger farms and they are all in Asia.

As tigers become rarer in the wild because of poaching and human population growth in India where the Bengal tiger primarily lives, they become more valuable in captivity, on farms. One of the most popular tiger products is tiger bone wine, a concoction that is claimed to treat arthritis, impotence and rheumatism. Perhaps it is claimed to cure pretty well everything and people believe it is well. There is no science to back this up.

Tiger body parts are cooked for wealthy businessmen and bureaucrats because they like to demonstrate their elevated social status and their wealth. They also think that eating bits of a tiger does them some good in some way.

There are now estimated 8,000 tigers held in captivity on farms across China and in Laos, Thailand and Vietnam as at the date of this update. They are housed in appalling conditions, concrete floors, barely enough space to allow them any form of normal exercise, completely unnatural habitat et cetera. Tigers bred on these farms for their bones are often malnourished and it is said that their deaths are deliberately induced by starvation.

One worker said that a skeleton is a bag of bones which is what they're looking for anyway. Tigers bred for meat rather than for bones are plumped up by being pumped full of liquid and force-fed to make them as fat as possible. The farmers fatten them up because they get more money for their carcasses. They can barely stand at the end of their lives with their stomach scraping low to the ground.

These tiger farms are described as speed-breeding factory farms providing raw materials for high-end products. It is a conveyor belt from the creation of cubs by a mother who is quickly brought back into heat by removing her cubs once born. They are used as forms of entertainment. Visitors can pay to cuddle and bottle feed them, take selfies with them for their social media webpages. Then once the cubs have grown up they can be fattened up and slaughtered. Everything is commercialised.

This once magnificent creature has been reduced to a commercial asset, to be maltreated as livestock and then fed to the arrogant and hungry mouths of rich bureaucrats in China and Laos.

Are Tiger Farms Bad? to Bengal Tiger Facts