With many concerns about animal welfare and the extinction of thousands of living creatures as a result of the traditional medicine market, we have decided to move forward with an endorsement supporting the conservancy group World Animal Protection (WAP).
WAP is a global animal welfare organization that has focused on a solution-based alternative for Traditional Medicine practitioners. They developed a unique website that contains a comprehensive database of plant and mineral based Traditional Chinese Medicine ingredients that can be used as alternatives to wild animal-based ingredients. It’s called Traditional Chinese Medicine Alternatives to Wild Animal Preparations (TAWAP).
A 2019/2020 survey was commissioned by WAP and carried out by CRT Market Research (www.ctrchina.cn/eindex.asp) on The Awareness and Attitude of TM Practitioners in China Towards the Use of Wild Animals in Medicine, hence finding an urgent need for creating a database.
- Less than 50% of the respondents are aware of the alternatives to ingredients derived from wild animals in TCM, a situation that awaits improvement
- 61.0% claim they would minimize the use of wildlife-based medicines if possible.
- 83.1% of the TCM practitioners would choose herbal medicines that are safer and more effective, as well as artificial derivatives with better quality over the medicine made from wild animals.
- 85.2% of the TCM practitioners say they will minimize or refrain from prescribing medicines with wild animals, while
- 54.3% of them will consider prescribing alternatives with similar or better efficacy
All contained information in the website is simply designed and was sourced and reviewed by the following:
- Professor Steve Given, former Academic Associate Dean at the American College of Traditional Chinese Medicine (ACTCM) in conjunction with the prestigious California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) based on two well-known materia medica and the 2015 edition of the Pharmacopeia of the People’s Republic of China
- Professor Lao, president of the Virginia University of Integrative Medicine
- Vivian Taam Wong Professorship in Integrative Medicine, Director of the School of Chinese Medicine, The University of Hong Kong, and the Vice President of the World Federation of Acupuncture-Moxibustion Societies
- Professor Fang Zhijun from the Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine
Please click here to review the online database.
“The message is simple: love and conserve our Wildlife!” —Steve Irwin
The ETCMA supports the independent and evidence-based online database Traditional Chinese Medicine Alternatives to Wild Animal Preparations and advocate in support of using plant-based alternatives. This is the key moving towards a wildlife friendly future.
