February 15 marked World Pangolin Day, which seeks to highlight the importance of protecting the critically endangered species. However, just days before, an image went viral on Chinese social media that showed a restaurant employee preparing a pangolin for consumption.
The uniform worn by the individual was that of Xiangjiangchun, a popular restaurant chain specialising in Hunan cuisine. Zhang Renjun, the founder and legal representative of the chain, confirmed that the individual pictured was an employee, but clarified that the branch was a franchisee in Laos.
Xiangjiangchun’s franchise operations team lead said that while the chain provides training for franchisee chefs, staff at this outlet were independently recruited. The decision to include pangolin on the menu was made independently by the franchisee, he told YangCheng Evening News.
In 1988, China listed pangolins as Class II endangered wildlife, banning the hunting, selling and purchase of pangolins for consumption. Three decades later, in 2020, China upgraded the national protection status of all pangolin species to Class I, the highest level. This was due to excessive hunting and habitat destruction leading to a sharp drop in pangolin numbers.
Since 2016, all eight pangolin species have been listed in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (Cites). This effectively prohibits all international commercial trade of wild-caught pangolins. However, the mammal continues to be threatened by illegal wildlife trade, noted wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic in a 2016 report.
Lu Qiong, a lawyer at Zhejiang Hengji Law Firm, said that if the allegations against the Laotian franchisee are substantiated, Xiangjiangchun may have violated local wildlife protection laws as Laos is one of the signatories to Cites.
However, wildlife laws in Laos do not cover non-native pangolin species, nor do they meet the requirements for the effective implementation of the convention, according to the Traffic report. Laos borders China, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam, and serves as an important transit hub for these countries, all of which actively trade in aspects of supply, transit and demand of wildlife, the report states.
Read Dialogue Earth’s previous analysis on why product labels may be failing to protect pangolins in China.