All game meat trade has been banned in China as the coronavirus spreads. The Chinese bamboo rat, a purportedly wild rodent, often reared by farmers, has found itself on the blacklist.
Photo: VCG
By LIU Lin
In Chinese astrology, each year has its own animal. Traditionally, your own year, ben ming nian, is thought of as unlucky. The Year of the Dragon deadens the dragon’s fire, dogs have a dog’s life in the Year or the Dog, and last year, the pigs were prodded out of their comfortable wallows. This year, the Year of the Rat – the most widespread laboratory animal in history – has started very badly for the rodents, and for all who depend upon them for a living.
Trade in bamboo rats, both live and dead, was banned on January 21 on the basis that the authorities said they may carry the coronavirus.
The Chinese bamboo rat, (Rhizomys Sinensis), suddenly became wanghong (internet “celebrities”) a few years ago for their cute, comical look and the many different delicious ways their slightly gamey flesh could be cooked. They look like giant guinea pigs and seem like they might make a nice pet. Wild ones live idyllic rural lives in among bamboo and sugarcane, quite different from their distant cousins in city sewers.
Rat farmers waited in limbo for a month, only to be struck by further distress, when the National People’s Congress (NPC) passed a motion on February 24 that prohibited the eating of “terricolous [soil-dwelling] animals of ecological, scientific or social value, no matter whether caught in the wild or captive bred.”
Flashback back to 2000, when the forestry administration of China issued a list of animals that were considered “of ecological, scientific or social value,” and bamboo rats – they must have felt quite lucky at the time - were on the list.
“Everyone is worried,” said bamboo rat breeder He Tianshui, when asked about the ban. “I see little hope. Many have no choice but to starve their rats to death. They cannot afford to feed them, and cannot simply set them free.”
He was born in mountainous Maoming in Guangdong Province, famous for bamboo and sugarcane, both great fodder for the rats. Farmers formed a cooperative and He registered more than 60 members, each of whom raise bamboo rats for all or part of their living.
After working in Shenzhen for more than ten years, He went home in 2014 and got started in the rat business with just a few pairs. By 2017, he had ploughed 200,000 yuan ($28,500) into facilities for the rats, which now number around 600.
Resigned to his fate, He is a man of few words: “I put hundreds of thousand into the business, just to watch myself go slowly broke.”
The bamboo rat breeding business grew briskly, especially after the Huanong Brothers, popular vloggers famed for amusing clips of their farming lives, ran some features on the furry little cuties. But at this year’s Spring Festival, the beginning of the Year of the Rat (which should also have been peak rat-eating season) the whole industry hit a wall. The first few weeks of ben ming nian are always the worst, as anyone’s grandmother knows.
Respiratory specialist Zhong Nanshan appeared on CCTV, the national broadcaster, on January 20 and declared that the source of the coronavirus outbreak might be wild animals, such as bamboo rats and badgers. The day after Zhong’s interview, the ministry of agriculture banned the transportation and trade of all “wild” animals, including captive-bred bamboo rats.”
Briefly, farmers remained optimistic and kept feeding their rats, waiting for the epidemic to pass. But the ban was not lifted: It was escalated, and the eating of bamboo rats, forbidden.
“I don’t know what to do,” said Nong Zhenfei, a farmer from Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region who runs a local rat cooperative.
“Our scale is huge; we have invested tens of millions of yuan and have more than 20,000 rats. Feeding them costs a fortune!”
Nong started in 2009. “I used to do other business, then I heard about people breeding rats who had bought houses and cars, so I gave it a try. I lost money in the first four years but started to make a profit in 2014.”
Just last year, Nong built a farm covering 20,000 square meters with the support of the local government. “Half of the funds for the farm came from the banks,” Nong said.
Zhao Mizheng, another bamboo rat farmer, this time from Hunan Province, told Jiemian News that he has invested over three million yuan and now has 2,000 hungry rats on his hands. When asked about his plans, he seemed to have none, apart from waiting for further notice from the government.
Farmers who rely on bamboo rats are not unusual in Southern China, especially in poor mountain areas. Rural Guangxi is just such a place, and Liu Kejun from the regional animal husbandry research institute said there are roughly 100,000 farmers there, making all or part of their living through the rat trade with over 18 million captive rats between them, around 70 percent of all captive bamboo rats in China. The industry generated more than 2.8 billion yuan last year, a huge amount in a region which had recently made great progress in the journey toward xiaokang, the “moderately prosperous” society.
“Bamboo rats are easy to breed as they don’t need much water,” Liu told Jiemian News. “It works well in these mountain areas where water is scarce.”
Zhang Wenming is president of a company in Guangxi that provides advice for rat farmers. He told Jiemian News that breeding bamboo rats had become an important route out of poverty for people in the mountains. “It is a good choice for poor peasants or homecoming migrant workers who might not have much money or specialist skills,” he said.
Liu said that, since the fodder bamboo rats thrive on is easily obtained, rat farmers are usually very green farmers. It costs around 5,000 yuan to breed ten pairs. Taking good care of them, there will be 50 pairs the next year, which will bring profits of about 10,000 yuan.
Gan Fuhai, in charge of poverty relief in a village in Jiangxi Province, told Jiemian News that many people in the village were breeding rats. Last year, five more joined the business. In many poor areas, farmers were either provided with free baby rats or given incentives to start their businesses.
“Bamboo is everywhere in the mountains. It is very cheap and easy to get,” said Gan. “The price of rats is also good, at least 160 yuan per kilogram. Restaurant demand often exceeds supply.” Pork, China’s staple meat, currently trades at around 30 yuan per kilogram
In Nong’s village, 72 farmers and their families have been lifted out of poverty since 2016 when they started breeding bamboo rats. Another 120 farmers jumped aboard in January, right before the ban, which followed hot on the heels of the epidemic.
The spectre of poverty, so quickly forgotten by those who escape its shadow, again looms large in the mountains.
“All work has stopped,” said Zhang. “The whole industry expects zero revenue in the first quarter.”
“They invited us to start businesses, to make money and promised to make us rich,” fulminated one a farmer on condition of anonymity. “Now they suddenly take it all away and cast us back into poverty without a second thought. We will be even poorer than before!” Nong also reckons that many farmers will lose everything.
Before the NPC prohibited eating game, the wild animal conservation law banned selling or eating of species under state protection, but people were allowed to sell or eat other species as long as they had a certificate of provenance. The bamboo rat was certainly not under state protection but considered of “ecological, scientific or social value.”
In 2003, the forestry administration released a list of 54 species of wildlife which could be reared under license. For reasons unknown, these 54 remain the “first batch” to this day. No second batch was ever forthcoming. The bamboo rat was not among the “lucky” 54.
So the poor beast was neither protected, nor of commercial value, but a loophole in the wild animal conservation law allowed provincial-level governments to call the shots on farming them. In Guangxi for instance, permission was granted to thousands of potential farmers.
Even today, Chinese bureaucracy is pretty straightforward as it seems. In most provinces, farmers actually need two documents from the government and a statement proving that the source of the rats, generally issued by other farmers who already had permission.
Few appear to have all three documents. One interviewee told Jiemian News he guessed that only around 30 percent of farmers were fully documented. He said demand for rats in some areas was such that a lot of merchants did not care where they came from.
From the bamboo groves, to the farm, to the dining table, bamboo rats walk in a legal twilight zone. Unlike livestock such as pigs, there are no inspection and quarantine standards, and no regulations on transportation.
Many breeders say the weak system has restricted the development of the industry and hope for the day when the Chinese bamboo rat is listed as livestock, and their sales and transportation are better organized.
The key problem, and reason for the NPC prohibition, is the designation of the captive bamboo rats. The wildlife conservation law has different levels of protection for different species. Bamboo rats are considered wildlife. It doesn’t matter whether an individual was born in captivity or not, all bamboo rats are wildlife.
Liu said it is fine to consider wild rats as wildlife, but captive rats should be considered livestock as they have been reared by humans for generations.
“All my rats came from other farms,” said farmer Tian Li. “I have never seen a bamboo rat in the wild, even if there are a few, they probably escaped from farms.”
“Almost all of the rats sold in the market come from farms,” said Liu. “There are rare cases where people sell wild bamboo rats, but the price is 15 to 20 percent higher than captive ones. This illegal trade could easily be stopped if the authorities wanted to.”
Some academics disagree with Liu and the other farmers. Li Jianqiang from Northwest University of Political Science and Law told Jiemian News sees vast differences between the rats’ natural environment and life down on the farm. The huge accumulation of rats in confined spaces such as farms offers the best possible environment for viruses to cross-infect and mutate.
The farmers aren’t buying it. They argue that bird flu originated from poultry, but chickens and ducks are not banned.
“Unlike pigs or chickens, bamboo rats pay strict attention to their personal hygiene,” said He Tianshui. “They keep themselves and their living space clean and eat only bamboo and sugarcane.”
He is also confused about how the bamboo rats came to be involved with the coronavirus in the first place. “People have been breeding them for over 30 years. If they did carry the virus, it would be people like us or those who transport them who would get the disease first,” he said. “But so far, I haven’t come across a single confirmed case among bamboo rat farmers, nor has anything been mentioned on the news.”
While the NPC has banned the eating of animals “with ecological, scientific or social value," it didn’t mention any specifics. An official from the NPC was quick to omit some animals from the list at a press conference. “Some animals such as rabbits and pigeons, have been bred in captivity for a long time and have formed an industry,” he said. “They play an important role in the economics of rural areas and are widely accepted by the public. These animals will be considered livestock.”
Bamboo rats seem to meet these criteria, and governments at all levels seem to support breeding them. In 2013, the ministry of agriculture and rural affairs began a massive poverty relief campaign for vast areas of China. Southwest border regions should support specialist breeding industries, said the plan, with the bamboo rat one of the animals mentioned. The rat became something of the darling of CCTV, which repeatedly reported the great success stories of rat rearing.
“Bamboo rats appear to be ‘widely accepted’ by the public,” said Liu. “Banning them will push many people back into poverty.”
More than six million bamboo rats are eaten in China every year and they are quite popular overseas as well. A report from the animal husbandry research institute of Guangxi showed that Alaska imports bamboo rats from China every year and that 500 tons of bamboo rat meat were exported to Southeast Asia last year. Products made of skin or hair, such as coats or brush pens, also sell well.
Zhang wonders if the authorities can show any link between the rats and the epidemic. He hopes people will continue their business once the epidemic is under control, but he is not optimistic. It could be just a very bad case of ben ming nian.
Shenzhen government proposed a motion on February 21, in which only ten birds and mammals are considered legal to eat, and the bamboo rat is not among them. After the NPC ban on February 24, Shenzhen adjusted the motion to include “other edible animals,” without naming them.
The NPC has said the ban may result in economic hardship for a number of farmers, and that local governments should help them through the tough times and assist them in establishing new business. Compensation should be paid.
The manager of an online bamboo rat breeding information exchange, “Mr. Bamboo Rat,” told Jiemian News that in Guangdong and Hunan, officials have started visiting bamboo rat farmers to tell them to prepare for the worst. Bio-safe disposal of the rats is also under discussion, but a final decision is yet to be made.
“The local governments are waiting to see where the wind blows,” said Mr Bamboo Rat. “Because the motion passed by the NPC on February 24 was vague, there is still hope.”
But one thing is for sure: The law on protection of wildlife will become stricter. The best the farmers can expect is to somehow continue to feed and sell their rats, but the industry will have to be regulated and standardized. Bamboo rats must be inspected and quarantined, just like any other livestock.
For the 25 million Chinese bamboo rats in captivity and their owners, the decision may be a matter of life or death, but for now, they exist in limbo. Whichever way Mr. Bamboo Rat’s wind blows, it looks like it will blow no good into the Year of the Rat for the farmers.
