23 June 2020



China secured huge international media coverage when its Government-controlled State media reported pangolin scales had been removed as a raw ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) – but in reality they can still be legally traded and used.

The story that pangolin was dropped from the official TCM pharmacopoeia, a compendium of approved traditional and Western medicines, was widely interpreted as a ‘ban’ on pangolin scales.

But EIA has discovered they’ve not been banned at all – behind the spin, pangolin scales are still listed as an ingredient in patent medicine formulae found in the official reference book.

Pangolins are the world’s most trafficked mammal and have been identified as a possible intermediate host in the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, although this has yet to be conclusively proven.

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