Rumor online: "It's OK to eat snakes"? Official response!

Recently, some self-media have spread rumors that "starting from March 1, you can eat snakes." Several self-media have also promoted the processing and sale of dishes using snakes as ingredients, which has attracted the attention of some catering companies and netizens. They have called the protection department to ask: Can snakes be eaten?

In response to this, the Guangzhou Forestry and Gardening Bureau stated: Snakes are not edible!

Neither wild nor farmed snakes have been included in the National Catalogue of Livestock and Poultry Genetic Resources (2021 Edition), and all business units are not allowed to use snakes as food ingredients for food processing. In addition to snakes, terrestrial wild animals such as civets, bamboo rats, and pheasants are also not allowed to be eaten.

Don't test the law!

According to the "Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on Comprehensively Banning Illegal Wildlife Trade, Eliminating the Bad Habit of Excessive Consumption of Wildlife, and Effectively Protecting the Life, Health and Safety of the People", the "Wildlife Protection Law of the People's Republic of China" and other laws and regulations, it is prohibited to eat nationally protected wild animals, nationally protected terrestrial wild animals with important ecological, scientific and social value, as well as other terrestrial wild animals.

There are many kinds of terrestrial wild animals. Except for the artificial populations of wild animals listed in the livestock and poultry genetic resources catalog, other terrestrial wild animals are prohibited from being eaten. Common ones include various amphibians and reptiles such as water snakes, gray rat snakes, cobras, toads, civets, wild boars, bamboo rats, badgers, yellow muntjacs, sparrows (various small forest birds are plucked and sold as sparrows), turtle doves, buntings, moorhens (black moorhens, white-breasted bitterns, etc.), birds of prey (owls, eagles, etc.), egrets (egrets, night herons, etc.), wild ducks (wild ducks, wild geese), etc.

Every citizen should refuse to eat wild animals in daily life and actively support and participate in the campaign against eating wild animals:

First, from the perspective of protecting wild animals and maintaining one's own health, we should abandon the unhealthy eating habits of "wild game" for nourishment and curiosity and show-off, resolutely stop eating wild animals, do not participate in indiscriminate hunting and illegal trading of wild animals, and establish a new trend of ecological civilization.

Second, while you yourself firmly refuse to eat wild animals, you should also actively warn and dissuade your relatives and friends not to eat wild animals, resist the behavior of eating wild animals, and create a good atmosphere for protecting wild animals.

Third, we actively support law enforcement activities to combat illegal consumption and illegal trading of wild animals. Once activities such as consumption of wild animals and illegal hunting, trading, and transportation of wild animals are discovered, complaints can be reported through 12345, 115, etc.

Planning and production

Source: Guangzhou Forestry and Gardening Bureau (ID: gzslyyl)

Editor: Yinuo