On May 8, the National Catalogue of Livestock and Poultry Genetic Resources closed for comments. The bamboo rat that is not included in the list of opinions will follow.
"Short, flat and fast" bamboo rat breeding has developed rapidly in the southern mountainous areas due to good management, fast reproduction and high efficiency, and has been supported by some local governments as a poverty alleviation project.
Since the introduction of the decision to ban wild animals, bamboo rat farmers have hoped that the artificially-bred bamboo rats will be included in the catalog, and they can continue to be bred and eaten according to the management of poultry and livestock. However, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs released the "National Animal Genetic Resources Directory" on April 8th, showing that bamboo rats are not included.
Farmers do not have much hope for the inclusion of bamboo rats. If they are really prohibited from breeding, they hope relevant departments can give reasonable compensation and conversion plans.
"We are still waiting, how can we compensate and support the conversion if we can't keep it, how to deal with these bamboo rats now."
"Can't sell, eat, or transport"
Just after the Spring Festival, Luo Lixiong, a bamboo rat farmer in Tongren, Guizhou, received a notice from the district forestry bureau that all the bamboo rats in the farm should be sealed on the spot. "Cannot sell, eat or transport."
He remembered that that day was January 26, and the number of new diagnoses of new pneumonia diagnosed on television was still rising. The person from the district forestry bureau told him that not only bamboo rats, but all wild animals farmed must be barred from trading until the epidemic is lifted.
Luo Lixiong felt understandable. "In a special period of the epidemic, it is normal to be afraid that animals are infected with viruses," he thought.
As usual, he feeds bamboo rats twice a day. In his free time, Luo Lixiong went online to read the news, and saw experts say that the virus that caused the outbreak may have come from wild animals, or it might have been a bamboo rat. Luo Lixiong murmured, "The bamboo rat hasn't heard of the epidemic for so many years. What happened this time?"
"Bamboo rats in the wild spend most of their time in caves. Compared with other wild animals, the probability of transmission is much lower. The farmed people live in closed fields and eat carefully prepared feed, so there is no chance of spreading the virus. "He thought, the bamboo rat should be innocent in the end.
But with the announcement of the National People's Congress on the fasting of wild animals on February 24, the fate of the bamboo rat has turned 180 °.
The decision was clear and a total ban on terrestrial wild animals, including artificial breeding and rearing breeds. Luo Lixiong still thinks it shouldn't be. "There has never been a virus infection in bamboo rats before. How can we not keep it without keeping it?"
He called the district forestry bureau and got the reply "wait again", "wait for the above policy." He also joined the WeChat communication group of some bamboo rat farmers. The chat content in the group is almost the same every day. Everyone is inquiring about each other. Can the bamboo rat keep it?
On the other side, 600 bamboo rats in the farm are still wailing.
These bamboo rats cannot eat or sell, but they cannot starve to death. "Each bamboo rat is fed 2 to 3 cents of feed per day, and it is more than 100 pieces a day." Raleigh was full of frustration. The hot bamboo rat became hot potato all at once.
The nearly 10,000 bamboo rats raised by Chongqing's Liu Yong are decreasing almost every day. Some starved to death, some died of illness.
Because bamboo rats cannot be sold, Liu Yong's bamboo rat breeding cooperatives' income source is also cut off. He had to reduce the cost of feeding, from feeding twice a day to feeding once a day, sometimes once every two days.
Spring is the breeding season for bamboo rats, but the policy is not clear, and Liu Yong does not dare to let the breeding rats mate. The cultured bamboo rats have extremely high requirements on the environmental temperature. The temperature in March and April is suddenly high and low, and it is getting hotter and hotter in May. He dare not invest money to start or install cooling equipment. Some bamboo rats with poor resistance slowly died of illness.
After more than three months, Liu Yong left six or seven thousand bamboo rats.
Liu Yong is anxious that even if he really doesn't want to raise bamboo rats, he should give a clear notice as soon as possible so that farmers can find another way out. "From January to May, the bamboo rat has been sealed in the field. While we continue to feed, there is no way to distract us from doing other things. At the same time, we have to worry about being kept at any time. What should we do in the future."
Liu Yong said that the wait of half a year basically means that there will be no income this year. If the bamboo rat is finally banned, it will be difficult for the farmers to invest hundreds of thousands to tens of millions of yuan to buy seedlings, build sites, and install equipment for breeding the bamboo rat.
"Good management, fast reproduction, high efficiency"
Without this epidemic, Liu Yong's bamboo rat breeding business may take another big step forward this year.
He is preparing to build a bamboo rat ecological breeding park to engage in new-type agricultural breeding industrialization. In June last year, he was optimistic about a barren slope of more than 100 acres, invested seven or eight hundred thousand yuan, rented land, opened up wasteland, and also invited the Chongqing Design Institute for planning and design.
He even thought about it, to introduce bamboo rat breeding experts, build standardized deep-processing plants, and use bamboo rats to drive offline experience and travel observation.
Liu Yong ’s confidence was accumulated in more than 3,000 days and nights with bamboo rats in the past 10 years.
Ten years ago, when Liu Yong introduced more than 200 pairs of bamboo rats from Guangxi to Chongqing for breeding for the first time, he had no idea. At that time, Liu Yong didn't know that bamboo rat breeding was a delicate job. Not only did long-distance transportation get sick easily, but suddenly he changed his living environment and he was "unacceptable." As a result, a lot of bamboo rats died.
The following year, Liu Yong went to Guangxi and introduced a group of bamboo rats. This time, he used all the breeding techniques and emergency techniques he learned at the Guangxi Rat Plant. Finally, this group of bamboo rats not only survived, but also began to breed smoothly.
Liu Yong's bamboo rat breeding was successful, and more and more people came to visit his breeding base. With the support of the local government, Liu Yong started to bring the surrounding farmers into bamboo rat breeding. Over the past few years, 150 households across the country have joined his bamboo and rat breeding cooperatives, 98 of which are poor households.
Liu Yong feels that the reason why bamboo rat breeding can be quickly accepted by farmers in mountainous areas is mainly because of its good management, fast reproduction, high efficiency, and strong disease resistance. "Ordinary farmhouses can be used as pens, and they eat more locally grown crude fiber food. As long as you master the habits of bamboo rats, it is much less laborious than raising pigs and cattle."
This is one of the reasons why Luo Lixiong chose to raise bamboo rats when he returned to his hometown of Tongren, Guizhou.
Luo Lixiong said that he thinks that bamboo rats are smarter than ordinary animals. "It loves hygiene by itself and will take the initiative to clean the den and pile up the excrement in a special area. If the pen is designed with a discharge port, it will also take the initiative to pour it out."
More importantly, he found that compared with other poultry, bamboo rats are less susceptible to epidemics. To the extent he understands, no infectious diseases such as swine fever and chicken fever have appeared. . "
According to Liu Kejun, senior livestock minister at the Guangxi Institute of Animal Science, the characteristics of bamboo rat breeding can be summarized in three words: short, flat, and fast. The most important thing is that the profit is considerable. "If you raise it smoothly, you will see a profit in half a year."
Therefore, bamboo rat breeding has formed a relatively large scale in Guangxi and other places as early as 10 years ago, and it has developed rapidly in the past ten years. After 2017, in Guangxi, Hunan, Guizhou, Yunnan and other places, bamboo rat breeding has also received government support as a poverty alleviation project.
In an implementation plan for the income-increasing work of special industries released by the seven departments including the former Ministry of Agriculture in 2014, bamboo rats were listed as special breeding that can be adapted to local conditions in the western Yunnan border area.
Encouraged breeding and inaccessible catalogs
As a major province of bamboo rat breeding, a notice issued by Guangxi in 2018 to promote poverty alleviation in special industries shows that poor households that raise more than 30 bamboo rats, as long as the average body weight is more than 1 kg or the breeding day is more than 20 days old, at the time of acceptance With a survival rate of 90%, you can get subsidies ranging from 56 yuan to 120 yuan each.
According to relevant statistics, Liu Kejun estimates that as far as Guangxi alone is concerned, there are currently about 100,000 bamboo rat breeders, and the stock of bamboo rat breeding is about 18 million. The annual output value is conservatively estimated at more than 2.8 billion yuan.
However, the growing bamboo rat breeding industry has to stop abruptly under the policy of a total ban on wild animals.
Luo Lixiong also considered the legality of breeding before raising bamboo rats.
As early as 2011, Tongren in Guizhou regarded bamboo rat breeding as a characteristic industry that rapidly increased farmers' income, and required localities to formulate their own incentives. This made him more firm in the idea of developing breeding.
In 2017, Luo Lixiong submitted to the Forestry Bureau of Bijiang District, Tongren City, Guizhou Province the application form of the domestic animal breeding license, the animal epidemic prevention certificate, the breeding ownership certificate, the introduction certificate, the breeding plan and other 14 domesticated breeding non-key protected wild animals for the record The required materials.
Soon, the local forestry bureau approved his application. Luo Lixiong provided a notice issued by the Bijiang District Forestry Bureau that he agreed to record the bamboo rats and porcupines he breeds, and approved an annual utilization limit of 1,000 bamboo rats and 300 porcupines.
In Luo Lixiong's view, this means that his farming is legal. "Guizhou's policy is the record system. It only needs to go to the local forestry bureau for record and get a record notice. The record notice is equivalent to the domestication and breeding license and the operation and utilization license." Luo Lixiong said.
Liu Yong also didn't understand that his breeding cooperative had already obtained a domestication and reproduction license and a wild animal operation and utilization license, and was promoted as a poverty alleviation demonstration project. Isn't it legal now?
In addition to 13 technical invention patents related to bamboo rat breeding, his bamboo rat breeding projects and products have won many awards in the district and city in recent years. In the 25th China Yangling Agricultural High-tech Achievements Expo in 2018, the bamboo rat products he raised won the highest award of the Hou Ji Special Award. "It was sponsored by 17 national ministries and commissions, and dozens of experts only assessed it after a few days. It is rare."
In the eyes of most farmers, raising bamboo rats is not much different from raising pigs and cattle. They once hoped that the bamboo rats will be included in the livestock and poultry catalog. Species that enter this category belong to livestock and poultry, and the provisions of the Animal Husbandry Law apply. It also means that it can be cultivated and eaten for commercial purposes.
However, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs released the "National Livestock and Genetic Resources Catalog" on April 8 to solicit opinions. The catalogue includes 18 traditional livestock and poultry such as pigs, rabbits, chickens and ducks, and 13 special livestock and poultry such as sika deer and alpaca. Bamboo rats are not among them.
Health and quarantine standards that have not been introduced
In fact, before the relevant decision on the fasting of wild animals was introduced in February this year, bamboo rats, as animals with important scientific research, economic and social values (referred to as "three animals"), were indeed allowed to be farmed.
But as the artificial breeding of terrestrial wild animals, bamboo rat, while the breeding scale is getting larger and larger, there is always a "gray zone"-bamboo rat sanitary inspection and quarantine standards have not yet been formulated.
Whether the bamboo rat has no official sanitary inspection and quarantine standards, whether it is qualified as food or not, has always been a pimple in the mind of the big bamboo rat farmer Liu Yong. Every year, he sends the cooked meat samples of farmed bamboo rats to a testing station in Chongqing that specializes in green food and organic food for report.
However, in Liu Yong's view, the display of qualified bamboo rat products does not mean that the bamboo rat itself meets the hygiene standards.
According to relevant laws and regulations of our country, farmed animals need to declare quarantine to the local animal health supervision agency before they are sold or transported. To date, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (formerly the Ministry of Agriculture) has promulgated the quarantine regulations for the origin of 11 animals including live pigs, poultry, ruminants, equines, dogs, cats, rabbits, bees, fish, crustaceans and shellfish.
"Bamboo rats do not have special health inspection and quarantine standards, as long as they enter the market, strictly speaking, it is impossible." Liu Kejun admitted.
Liu Kejun, who has been working on bamboo rat breeding technology for nearly 30 years, also feels helpless. "For so many years, bamboo rats have only raised standards and no quarantine standards. In some places, they can only refer to the quarantine standards of rabbits and other animals for certification. Even so, bamboo rats have always been in circulation, sale and consumption."
In 2017 and 2018, both Liu Kejun and the experts of the Guangxi Animal Disease Center declared the health and quarantine project of bamboo rats to the relevant departments, but no project has been established. If the epidemic did not occur, Liu Kejun originally planned to continue to declare and establish a bamboo rat quarantine standard project this year.
But the "Sword of Damocles" suddenly fell, blocking the bamboo rat from the livestock catalog.
Whether a species should be allowed to be commercially cultured and eaten, in the eyes of many wildlife research institutions and industry insiders, whether the public health risk of the species is controllable should be considered first.
"The sanitary inspection and quarantine standards are a red line to enter the list of cultivable and edible. Bamboo rats have no quarantine standards so far, and they have not been able to have complete quarantine regulations in the near future, which means that its public health risks remain doubtful." Ma Yong, vice chairman of the Green Development Association pointed out.
In the WeChat groups of farmers in Guizhou, Guangxi, Chongqing and other places where Liu Yong and Luo Lixiong are located, everyone has little hope that the fate of the bamboo rat will be modified. "We are still waiting. We were waiting to inform the bamboo rats whether we can raise them. Now, if we can't raise them, how to compensate and support the conversion, and how to deal with these bamboo rats now," said one farmer.
Luo Lixiong said that if bamboo rats are really prohibited from breeding, in the future he hopes to cooperate with relevant scientific research institutions to find out the problems and solutions of bamboo rats in food safety, disease prevention and other aspects. At the same time, he also hopes that relevant departments can give reasonable compensation and conversion plans. "Abrupt changes in policy should not allow farmers to pay."
Beijing News reporter Wu Jiaoying