RPT - FEATURE - COVID-19 Wildlife Ban Jeopardizes Livelihood Of Chinese Bamboo Rat Farmers

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 18th March, 2021) Lu Junyun took over the family business of breeding bamboo rats after graduating from middle school in 1996, long before two young brothers on Chinese social media turned the rodent into one of the most popular exotic cuisines in China in 2018.

In fact, locals in Lu's hometown of Gongcheng county in southwestern China's Guangxi province had been eating and breeding the bamboo rats for centuries.

"In Gongcheng, it's an old tradition to breed bamboo rats. Our older generations always bred them. That's why I just followed their path," Lu told Sputnik.

However, as part of China's efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese authorities introduced new restrictions on wild animal trade in February 2020 and banned farms that bred wild animals for consumption.

Despite being bred on farms for decades, the bamboo rat was still included in the list of banned wild animals. As a result, all the bamboo rat farms were forced to cull their products and shut down.

The ban on bamboo rat farms turned Lu's life completely upside down, as the only source of income for his family was taken away.

From making more than 200,000 Yuan (about $30,762) a year off around 2000 bamboo rats on his farm, Lu felt lost about his future as he had not tried to do a different job after graduating from middle school more than 20 years ago.

"After culling the bamboo rats, I have not found a new job," he said.

The history of eating bamboo rats can be traced back to as early as BC 1100s during the Zhou Dynasty in China. The bamboo rats were considered a delicacy that only senior ranking government officials had the privilege to eat them, historical records at the time showed.

According to the renowned Chinese herbology book Compendium of Materia Medica, the bamboo rat could grow as big as a rabbit and tastes like duck, while eating its meat could help nourish a person's inner energy and bring other health benefits.

As locals in Gongcheng county had a tradition of breeding bamboo rats for centuries, the county became known as "the hometown of bamboo rats in China" in recent years. The "Gongcheng Bamboo Rat" was recognized as a national agricultural geographical signature product in August 2014.

Similar to other rural areas in southwestern China that were struggling with poverty, the average annual income of rural residents in Gongcheng county was only around 8,890 yuan (about $1,367) in 2015.

As part of the local government's efforts to eradicate poverty, the Gongcheng county government introduced an action plan in 2016 on targeted poverty alleviation by allocating special funds to assist poor families through bamboo rats breeding. The plan promised to provide technical training and guidance of bamboo rats breeding to those families and aimed at lifting them out of poverty through the bamboo rats breeding business.

According to Chinese media reports, the number of bamboo rats breeders in Gongcheng county expanded to over 2,000 with an annual revenue of over 40 million yuan in 2017.

However, the ban on bamboo rat farms dealt a devastating blow to Gongcheng county's economy, as a large number of local residents relied on this business for their livelihood.

Following the national regulation, all the bamboo rats breeders in Gongcheng county were forced to get rid of the rats and shut down.

Although local authorities in Gongcheng offered 180 yuan for each culled bamboo rat as compensation, Lu said the amount was far from enough to cover his losses.

"The compensation only covered the number of bamboo rats that were culled by July last year. But there were many rats that died while waiting for the final decision. And our breeding facilities and equipment did not receive any compensation. I received about 300,000 yuan in compensation, but I lost hundreds of thousands more yuan [because of the cull]," he said.

Lu shared videos with Sputnik of thousands of bamboo rats being culled and packed in large plastic bags for harmless disposal.

"The [medical] experts wanted to kill you. I can't do anything to help," the caption in the video said.

The team of World Health Organization experts dispatched to investigate the origins of COVID-19 in China suspected that wildlife farms were likely where the new coronavirus came from, the National Public Radio reported on Monday.

Chinese authorities' decision to shut down the wildlife farms in February 2020 was a strong signal that they probably believed those farms were most likely the pathway for the virus to jump from its animal hosts to humans, Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist with EcoHealth Alliance and a member of the WHO team that traveled to China this year, was quoted as saying by the NPR.

However, during the press conference following their trip to Wuhan, the WHO team did not reach a specific conclusion on the origins of COVID-19, while naming transmission through an intermediary animal host as one possible way for the new coronavirus to infect humans.

The WHO team indeed noted that wild animals, including bamboo rat, rabbit and ferret badger, were being sold at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, where the first cluster of COVID-19 patients were identified.

But a Chinese expert of the WHO team said all the wild animal samples from the market tested negative for COVID-19 and the first identified patient in Wuhan had no links to the market.

No matter whether COVID-19 indeed emerged from one of those wildlife farms in China, the harsh decision to shut down all farms that bred bamboo rats has uprooted the tradition that ran in Gongcheng county for decades, if not centuries, and seriously disrupted the local economy.

Similar to Lu, many farmers from Gongcheng county joined the bamboo rats breeding business after only graduating from middle school. With inadequate education to look for better opportunities, a lot of them were forced to take on other physically challenging jobs to make ends meet.

Thanks to the success of his bamboo rats business, Ye Fazhen, 38, from Gongcheng county built a three-story house and bought an SUV for his family. But after this business got crushed completely because of the ban, Ye was forced to start over and venture into other businesses.

Ye began to breed donkeys and picked up other less profitable businesses such as boiling bamboo shoots.

In a video he shared on his TikTok account, Ye showed his wife carrying bamboo shoots in a huge basket that looked to be bigger than her and struggled to walk through a narrow path in a mountainous area.

The young couple were cutting bamboo shoots by hands and had to carry them out of the hills, before boiling them for sale.

"If there was no pandemic, she wouldn't have to work so hard and be so tired now," Ye wrote in the caption under the video.

As for Lu, he still has not decided which business to go into next, because he does not have the skillsets for other businesses since he has been breeding bamboo rats all his life.