BEIJING: Customs officials in southern China’s Guangdong province seized 2,764 frozen pangolin carcasses last month in the biggest trafficking case involving the endangered species in five years.
Pangolin meat is considered a delicacy in China and traditional Chinese medicine holds that pangolin scales possess healing qualities. The animals were found in 414 cooling boxes loaded aboard a fishing vessel sailing from Southeast Asia.
The haul weighed in at 11.5 tonnes and would have netted RMB10,000 for the smugglers if their boat had not been intercepted at Jiangmen, a prefecture-level city located 100 kilometres from Guangzhou in the Pearl River Delta region.
