Official list of livestock and poultry expected soon

The agriculture department will soon release a new list of the country's livestock and poultry, as a consequence of the recent ban on trade and consumption of wild animals across the country, a senior official said on Thursday.

On Feb 24, the National People's Congress announced a decision to ban the hunting, trade and transportation of wild terrestrial animals for purposes of consumption, which comes after the outbreak of the novel coronavirus.

Common poultry and livestock like pigs, cattle and sheep are not included in the ban. Aquatic wild animals like fish are not prohibited, since fishing is an important agricultural mode of production.

Animals that have been farm-raised for a long time so as to have become widely accepted by the public, and that form value chains helpful in local poverty alleviation, such as pigeons and rabbits, are also excluded.

However, the ban didn't produce a detailed list, which would include other species of animals that do not belong to the groups traditionally thought of as livestock and poultry, but have been farm-raised for a long time.

As many people have doubts about what can be eaten and what cannot, Han Xu, deputy director of the Bureau of Fisheries under the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said the ministry will soon release a list of livestock and poultry.

Different from wild animals, livestock and poultry should be farm-raised for a long time and widely used, Han said.

As livestock and poultry, these animals should have developed stable features through human selection different from their wild species, he explained at a news conference on Thursday.

Those animals are raised and processed under the supervision of "a complete disease control and prevention system" and the raising should be "an internationally accepted practice", he said.

According to Han, the agriculture department has initiated a national survey on the country's livestock and poultry industry since 2006.

"We've drafted a list and will send it to the State Council for an approval as soon as possible," he said.

Moreover, he said the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs is cooperating with the National Forestry and Grassland Administration to make another list of the country's protected animals, including those aquatic animals either in the wild or bred in captivity.

The list will be jointly released by the two departments soon, and will become the legal basis for the ban in practice.