Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) Consultative Committee member Lei Wun Kong suggested at a regular meeting yesterday that Macau should prohibit the consumption of wild animals and clarify the scope of edible animal species, in order to improve food safety and reduce public health risks.
The regular meeting took place at the IAM headquarters yesterday. Members of the committee presented their work report about its May-June activity plan.
Lei said that due to the need for future virus prevention, it was necessary to increase food safety and animal protection efforts in Macau. Lei pointed out that besides the current regulations, Macau should also ban the consumption of wild animals and specify which animals are allowed to be eaten by humans, similar to related regulations in Zhuhai.
He added that there should also be penalties for activities such as hunting, selling, buying, supplying, slaughtering, storing and transporting wild animals that are banned for consumption.
Early this year, the 16th meeting of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, which was held in Beijing on February 24, passed a new regulation about the prohibition of the consumption of, and trade in, wild animals.
In addition, on May 1, Zhuhai also implemented a regulation on the prohibition of consuming wildlife, which clarified the scope of edible animals. It is prohibited to eat wild animals, cats and dogs in Zhuhai now.
According to the World Animal Protection non-governmental organisation (NGO), in recent years numerous wild animal species have been introduced to the market as luxury food, medicinal materials and pets. Trade has become one of the biggest reasons for the global extinction of animals.
A report about the global trade in wild animals as pets released by the NGO last year showed that the annual turnover of trade in the world’s flora and fauna has reached US$42 billion, of which illegal trade is estimated at US$20 billion. Most of the profits comes from endangered and protected animals being traded as pets. The estimated turnover does not include the ingested or medicinal use of wild animals, according to the report.
Municipal Affairs Bureau (IAM) Consultative Committee members attend a regular meeting at the bureau’s headquarters in Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro yesterday.- Photo: Amy Chao
