Tiger Trade Ban & Myth of Free Market Economics
May 16th, 2009 Originally Posted by Dr Vandana Prakash
Some lobbyists are pushing for removal of a ban on trading tiger body parts, citing the importance of a free market economy. The argument claims that the ban must be lifted because it has failed to address the issue head-on. However, as it stands the argument is a falsity used with clear intent of misinforming. The practice of raising tigers in the farms to re-populate in the wild, as of now, seems as facetious. Tiger-farms do great injustice to Traditional Chinese Medicine when they seek to justify their breeding of tigers for their parts for practice of TCM and the associated lifestyle.
Saving the tiger has become an issue fraught with much discussion — and much of it is ill-informed and misleading. On the one hand are the tiger-farm lobby and the so-called “believers of free-market economics” such as John Stossel (ABC 20/20) , Terry Anderson (PERC) and Barun Mitra (Liberty Institute). They want to lift the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) ban and favor open trade in tiger-parts. They cite the apparent failure of the ban as the primary reason for lifting the ban. Their arguments, they say, derive from free-market economics. On the other hand are numerous (possibly insignificant because they lack the voice) individuals who, lacking voice, have opted for the exit option and have modified their behavior to save the most charismatic of animals, the wild tiger. Alongside are many governments and many, many NGOs that struggle to save the tiger from extinction, that struggle to keep our world one species richer and which work to enable our future generations to look at the king of the forest, the tiger, in reality, not just in picture-books. Apart from humane motives, their arguments are supported by economists, sociologists, zoologists, conservation-biologists, etc.