Bad to the bone: China vendors pass off painted ox bones as those of tigers, make bogus illness cure claims
- Bones from big cats once a popular treatment for range of ailments
- China banned use in medicine, ‘tiger wine’, other products in 1993
Two vendors in China have been caught selling ox bones disguised as those from a tiger, and claiming they are a cure for rheumatism and other ailments.
A video clip showing the pair with the items at a market in southern China’s Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region went viral online in December last year.
In the video, the men claim the bones can cure leg pain and backache as well as rheumatism. Each two-centimetre-long piece of bone was priced at 100 yuan (US$14).
When the authorities confronted the vendors, they admitted the bones they were selling were from oxen and had been painted with yellow and black stripes so they could pass them off as tiger bones.
The news came as a shock for many, especially as China had banned the use of tiger bones in medicine, and the sale of any products containing them, in 1993.
Tiger bones were traditionally believed to be a precious traditional Chinese medicine, or TCM, ingredient that could cure a range of diseases and conditions, including inflammation. They were also thought to strengthen human bone.
Some householders still store a blend of the bones soaked in white wine with herbs added, believing the longer the mixture is kept the more efficacious it is. It is not clear if it is legal to trade wine made before it was banned.
In 2022, a wildlife biologist at Beijing Normal University, Feng Limin, told Guangming Daily that the endangered Siberian tiger – the bones of which were originally used in the tradition – are the only surviving wild tiger subspecies found on Chinese land today.
Feng said there were 100,000 wild tigers in Asia a century ago but today only 3,000 to 5,000 remain.
Rhino horns are also believed to be a potent TCM ingredient that can prevent strokes and reduce fever. A product made from rhino horns before 1993, the angong niuhuang pill, was deemed a panacea.
The pill made today with rhino horns’ substitute buffalo horns is selling for around 800 yuan (US$111) per pill.
A 1993 pill made with real rhino horns sold for 15,750 yuan (US$2,200) at auction, according to a 2019 report in Beijing Youth Daily.
In 2018, China sparked a worldwide outcry after its State Council announced the legalisation of the sale of rhino and tiger products under “special circumstances”, including scientific research, cultural education, and “medical research or clinical treatment of critical illness”.
When international animal rights advocates protested against the announcement, China quickly restored the ban on rhino and tiger products, saying : “The Chinese government will not ease the crackdown on illegal trafficking and trade of rhinos, tigers and their by-products”.
