TNAG-0468-FCO40-533-Legislation-for-protection-of-wild-life-in-Hong-Kong-1974 — Page 126

PENN

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I've seen civet cats, many civet cats with legs just about coming off hanging on by a thread, which shows that they've been trapped by gin traps which are probably used fairly extensively all over South China. We know they're used in Hong Kong.

Lance

I saw a young man attempting to catch a pangolin that had escaped. And he stood on it with both feet on an animal weighing 10 lbs., him weighing a hundred pounds or more until the animal was just squashed flat. Then he grabbed it by the tail, picked it up, and placed it in the cage.

I presume a restaurant owner

about to

I saw one restaurant purchase a leopard cat. Now a leopard cat in a certain dish has certain properties, therefore for this dish he wants a really fierce wild leopard cat, not a tame manky looking one. There were six different leopard cats in six different cages, and he went and prodded and poked each one in turn until he saw the one that gave the fiercest response the one that was most alive and fiercest and growled and hissed and spat as a result of his prodding and poking. Then this man selected that fiercest one for his cooking pot.

C

One other aspect which would strike anyone as being cruel is the way an experienced animal handler - one of the older men had to do this - extracted a cat from one cage placed it in another with his bare hands. The wild leopard cat. This animal was fierce, spitting, ready to bite, scratch. This man somehow grabbed it by the tail without getting bitten or scratched, swung it around in the air until the cat the cat was screaming - he swung it, literally swung the cat and was able with some deft flick of the wrist to swing it in such a position that its head ended up in another cage.

The cat of course, was injured by this, but the men unfortunately escaped without injury.

A leopard cat the zoologist himself bought for demonstration and release died of internal injuries just 2 days later.

Lance

Another instance was when I saw eight monkeys in one small cage - about 3 foot square by about 2 foot high. These monkeys had obviously - hadn't been fed or watered for several days. There was an awful smell coming from them, and there were clouds of flies buzzing around. And the monkeys could barely raise their

heads.