China
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Chinese drug firms backed by global banks found using leopards and pangolins parts.
Three top Chinese pharmaceutical companies, which are backed by top global banks, are using endangered animal parts in their medicines, according to an investigation by an environmental protection group.
In a Monday report, the Environmental Investigation Agency UK (EIA) said it had found 72 companies licensed by China’s drug regulator to be using body parts of leopards and pangolins, two species that face the threat of extinction.
Among them are three publicly listed traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) giants: Beijing Tong Ren Tang, Tianjin Pharmaceutical and Jilin Aodong Medicine.
The EIA said it had found at least nine “products stated to contain leopard and/ or pangolin” that were manufactured by the firms.
Some of the companies identified also sell products that contain parts of tigers and rhinos, which would contradict “China’s own stated position that it does not allow use of tiger bone and rhino horn in medicine,” the organization said.
“This is use on an effectively industrial scale which can only push these species ever closer to extinction,” Avinash Basker, an EIA legal and policy specialist, said in a separate statement.