At the end of January 2019, about half a month after the recommendation meeting of the 2019 National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (NPC and CPPCC), the proposal to ban the use of pangolin scales for medicine made by CBCGDF has been verbally approved by relevant departments of the state and they plan to start regulating related work in a short time.

Pangolin scales are smuggled into China every year due to the huge domestic market demand for medicinal products. It is the most severely ravaged mammals by illegal trade in the world. Chinese pangolin is a unique species of pangolin. Since ancient times, Chinese have been using Chinese pangolin scales to make medicine in traditional Chinese medicine. But the number of Chinese pangolins has fallen by 88-94% since the 1960s, and the species was declared "commercially extinct" in China around 1995. In 2016, all 1 genus and 8 species of pangolins were listed in appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and are prohibited in international trade.

Secondly, the Chinese Pharmacopoeia clearly points out that Chinese pangolin scales can be used into medicine. The species in Latin is Manis pentadactyla Linnaeus. However, due to the exhaustion of Chinese pangolin, China has been unable to support the demand of Chinese traditional medicine market. The pangolin scales in circulation are mostly other pangolins illegally smuggled.

Facing extinction of pangolin, illegal fake drugs etc., CBCGDF widely appeal to society to cancel using pangolin scales to make medicine, delete relevant information from the Chinese pharmacopoeia. CBCGDF will do the work through a variety of ways in multi-direction at the same time.

On January 23, 2019, the State Pharmacopoeia Commission announced the amendments to the four general principles of the Chinese Pharmacopoeia 2020 Edition (the Fifth Batch). Although the content of this revision does not involve the category of traditional Chinese medicine, CBCGDF still wants to make use of this to appeal to the relevant departments to remove pangolin scales from the Pharmacopoeia as soon as possible.

(Photo credit: CBCGDF)

Original Chinese article:

http://www.cbcgdf.org/NewsShow/4854/7558.html

By / Cynthia