Sunday, 8 June 2014

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #217 Rally Against Lion Bone Trading

1000 Flowers for the Planet - #217 Rally Against Lion Bone Trading

[By guest contributor, Stephanie Keys]
You may have already read the flower regarding canned hunting (Flower #92). ‘Breeders’ fetch a high price for this ridiculous so-called ‘sport’. A bi-product of this, where the people running these canned hunting rackets earn even more money from our endangered creatures, is in their bones. Lion bones are used in the making of tiger wine, in which the bones are ground up and are meant to cure all sorts of ailments. It may seem to make little sense to use lion bones in tiger wine, but the reasoning is this; tigers have been poached to the point of near extinction and so their remains are becoming hard to come by. Because of this, makers of tiger wine are substituting tiger bones with lion bones. But doesn’t this seem like a bit of false advertising? If it’s tiger bones that are meant to cure the illnesses, then substituting them for lion bones wouldn’t work. UNLESS! It never worked in the first place – and as there is no scientific backup for this wine actually helping with anything to do with the function of a human being at all, it seems more than likely that this has been the case all along. However, if people keep buying the product, it will continue to be manufactured. This leaves our lions AND our tigers in jeopardy, unless something can be done. The word needs to be spread about this substituting, and people need to be educated that this ‘wine’ does nothing to help them, it’s all a placebo designed to take their hard earned cash.

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