A chain of interests of a wild earthworm
Freezing Point Feature Issue 1266
The site where the ground was dried.
Photo courtesy of Weining County Procuratorate
The site where the ground dragon is made.
Photo courtesy of Weining County Procuratorate
It is easy to declare the death of an earthworm, whether it is one or a group.
Using a device called "Dilong Instrument" to catch earthworms, "a battery and two wires were inserted into the ground, and the earthworms crawled out immediately, which made the scalp numb." In some places, they caught five or six pounds Earthworms only need 20 minutes, while a fully charged battery can work continuously for 5 hours.
In the land that has not been "electric", it is not a problem to have two or three hundred kilograms of electricity a day.
In nature, earthworms grow for hundreds of millions of years.
Originally, the most important factors affecting their growth were temperature and precipitation. Now, human beings use technology to intervene.
The captured earthworms are opened, rinsed, dried, and then sold to the Chinese herbal medicine market.
There, it was called Earth Dragon.
It is a traditional Chinese medicine that has been included in the "Chinese Pharmacopoeia", and has the functions of "clearing heat and calming panic, dredging collaterals, relieving asthma, and diuretic".
Although Dilong has been used as a Chinese medicinal material for nearly two thousand years, the capture of wild earthworms has never been so crazy as in recent years.
Driven by economic interests, hundreds of thousands of tons of earthworms were electrocuted from the ground, and people picked them up and dried them.
Electric earthworm hunters say that more and more patients with cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases in China need it.
In China, where protection of ecology and protection of health are equally concerned, wild earthworms have been pushed to the focus of public opinion.
Environmental protection organizations and local procuratorates have begun to sue the sellers of Dilongyi, the people who electric earthworms, and the bosses who collect dried earthworms, for destroying the ecology and soil; on the other side, in the medicinal material markets of various places, Dilong is sold at high prices to pharmaceutical companies and hospitals. , pharmacy, and eventually into the human body.
"When the machine rings, gold is ten thousand taels"
In the north, summer is not a suitable season for catching earthworms.
Liu Yulian, a peasant woman from Shangqiu, Henan, knew this.
She has been in the "earthworm industry" for more than 20 years. Recently, a friend told her, "I can't find earthworms everywhere in the house."
At this time, with high temperature and little rainfall, the soil is often cracked by the sun, and earthworms burrow deeper.
Even so, there are still some people who take the Dilongyi and look for them in the fields.
Earthworms that are afraid of light and dark come out at night, so this group of people who catch earthworms go out at night, with lights, buckets, and rubber shoes, and appear in the wild after nightfall.
Sometimes, they also "rise by night", usually after the beginning of spring.
The sizzling earth dragon instrument will appear in farmland, vegetable fields, parks, dry rivers, and mountains and forests.
When many people first saw the use of such "modern" technology to catch earthworms, they stopped to watch.
Earthworm hunters are not only found in Henan, but also in Suzhou, Anhui, Xuzhou, Jiangsu, mountains and hills in Guangdong and Guangxi, mountain forests in Yunnan, Guichuan, and rubber fields in Hainan.
They followed the dung left by the earthworms on the surface to find their trail.
More than 140 years ago, Darwin also observed the scene of earthworms defecation, and finally wrote "humus and earthworms", and praised, "earthworms are the most valuable animals on earth, and only earthworms can have fertile soil."
But when worm catchers find worm droppings, they think of money.
According to what the reporter learned from a number of earthworm purchasers, at present, the price of dry earthworms is 90-120 yuan/catties, and the prices of earthworms are different depending on the variety and quality of finished products.
In an area rich in earthworm resources, a farmer can catch hundreds of kilograms of wet earthworms a day by means of "Dilongyi", and finally 10 kilograms of wet earthworms can be dried for 1 kilogram of dry earthworms.
While farmers know that earthworms are good for the soil, for many rural people there are few ways to make money faster and easier than electric earthworms.
More than 20 years ago, when Liu Yulian first came into contact with the "earthworm industry", she was caught by digging with a hoe, using a razor blade to open her stomach, and then drying it on the floor. The dried earthworms were about 20 yuan/kg.
"(Wet earthworms) are only 30 cents per catty, and only 10 yuan is earned by digging 40 catties a day." Liu Yulian said, "That time (doing this business) is short."
In the past 20 years, the price of Dilong has increased tenfold.
In 2021, the market price of Quankai Guangdilong (a term for the acquisition of Dilong, which can be divided into full-open, half-open, unified goods, etc. according to the processing conditions - reporter's note) once rose to 275 yuan/kg.
She told reporters that in her village, many villagers have only begun to contact the "earthworm industry" in the last two or three years.
In her view, this stems from the rising demand and price of wild earthworms in the medicinal material market.
The appearance of Dilongyi also makes earthworm capture more efficient.
In addition, the emergence of short video platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou has also exposed more people to this "big profit" industry.
Liu Yulian sells Dilongyi and also recycles dried earthworms. She said that she can collect 1,000 kilograms of dried earthworms a day in peak season.
Not long ago, a person from Heze, Shandong came to visit the site. She showed the customer a machine that "produces earthworms in seconds", and the goods she received came from all over the country, including Sichuan and Yunnan.
"As soon as the machine rings, gold is ten thousand taels", "Working part-time, empty-handed, it is better to work at home and process earthworms." Those businessmen who collect earthworms have made attractive slogans on the Internet.
They regard the "earthworm industry" as a new "road to prosperity in rural areas" and call earthworms "soft gold in rural land".
Wan Quan, a young man from Xuchang, Henan Province, noticed the "earthworm industry" from the Internet in the spring of 2019. At that time, a pound of dried earthworms could sell for more than 80 yuan.
At that time, there was already a fairly mature industrial chain for catching earthworms.
Wan Quan, who had lost money in business before, had doubts about this "entrepreneurship project" until that summer, when he went to Shangqiu Yucheng to see the developed local "industrial chain" with his own eyes.
Wan Quan told a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that the boss who led him to start a business was in Yucheng. When he first collected earthworms, he rode a "28-style" bicycle. He built a decent villa and opened a supermarket.
In their village, there are "too many people" who make money around earthworms.
Wanquan spent 800 yuan to bring back a set of equipment from Yucheng to start a "business".
The starting point of "entrepreneurship" is a dry river on the outskirts of the city.
Today, Wanquan's "earthworm processing factory" has opened in Weining, Guizhou, and Xuzhou, Jiangsu. Every time he goes out and returns to his hometown, he will go to the "Entrepreneurship River" to have a look.
He heard that around 2016, when people in Luohe, Henan first started the business of "earthworms", some elderly people in the countryside were unwilling to spend the money to buy land for Longyi. Digged down."
Judgments on the Internet of Judgment Documents show that in 2020, in Pei County, Jiangsu Province, a young man was electrocuted while testing an earthworm trap he purchased outside his home, leaving behind his parents in their late 70s, his wife in their early 30s, and two years of age. young daughter.
There are also media reports that in 2022, in Rugao, Jiangsu, a villager in his 70s was electrocuted while catching earthworms with his homemade Dilongyi.
Nevertheless, in this circle, there are more stories about the "dream of getting rich".
"(I want to do) this thing is to get a lot of goods." Wan Quan told reporters that he knew that last year in Xiaoliangshan, Sichuan, there was a boss who sold 200 tons of dry goods in three months.
"It's not too many, it's too many," he said.
Overall demand has risen in the past 10 years
There is no information on who invented the Dilongyi, but in China, there are many businesses that produce and sell it.
Over the years, the Dilong instrument used to capture earthworms has been transformed by different manufacturers and has been upgraded several times; Dilong stop loss liquid for earthworm preservation has appeared on the market; belly machine”, the barbed wire for drying earthworms.
An enterprise named "Zhongshan Jiuchi Electric Co., Ltd." applied for the registration of the trademarks of "Dilongyi" and "Earthworm Machine" in 2017 and 2018, while another enterprise located in Zhongshan City that produced Dilongyi, with On the grounds that "Dilongyi" is a generic name, it requested "invalidation of the disputed trademark", but in the end "the disputed trademark was maintained".
In the patent search system of the "State Intellectual Property Office", search for "Dilongyi", there are a number of related invention patents, the earliest one of which was filed on May 23, 2016.
In fact, the appearance of Dilongyi or earthworm machine was far earlier than 2016.
According to the recollection of an earthworm farmer in Yulin, Guangxi, the phenomenon of using "hydro battery" for electric earthworms for vehicles began to appear in the local area around 2005.
Jia Liming, who has been engaged in earthworm farming for 31 years, remembers that he noticed the emergence of the "electric earthworm machine" more than ten years ago.
In 2014, some media reported that in Qionghai City and Anding County, Hainan Province, wild earthworms were sold by electric trapping with "Dragon Machine".
Sun Zhenjun, a professor at the Department of Ecology at China Agricultural University who has been engaged in earthworm research for more than 30 years, only noticed the emergence of electric earthworm machines around 2013.
The manufacture of this device is not complicated.
Liu Yulian told reporters that her family produces and sells electric earthworm machines and belly-opening machines.
Through the "Enterprise Check" search, the reporter found that there are 15 companies in Henan whose business scope includes "earthworm machines", of which 13 are concentrated in Jiegou Town, Yucheng County. They were established between 2019 and 2020. At the same time, it sells "earthworm belly opening machine" and "lithium battery", and some also purchase Chinese medicinal materials.
In Liuyan Village, Liuyan Village, Jiegou Town alone, there are 6 individual industrial and commercial households related to the "earthworm industry".
Those wild earthworms captured by electricity need to be mixed with "pot ashes" first, and then put into the "tummy opener" one by one.
After the belly is opened, the earthworm must be washed with water to remove the sediment in the abdomen.
Then, spread it out one by one and dry it on barbed wire or bamboo poles.
"It tastes exactly the same as that dried fish."
In some large-scale processing points, there will be more than 10 hired peasant women who open their stomachs for earthworms at the same time.
The opening and drying of thousands of earthworms is a time-consuming task.
A girl in the countryside did the math. She electrified 20 catties of earthworms, and it took 4 hours to put them out.
The huge fishy smell of earthworms often attracts flies all over the house, which has not affected many farmers.
In Liuyan Village, some villagers set up the acquisition point of dried earthworms on the side of the road opposite the village committee, and some people brought customers who came from Jiaozuo to investigate at the side of the ditch in front of Liuyan Police Office of Jiegou Town Police Station Test the "Dragon Instrument".
The mature earthworm processing industry in Yucheng, Shangqiu attracts people from all over the country who want to "dig gold" from the soil.
Shangqiu is adjacent to Bozhou, and Jiegou Town, Yucheng County is located at the junction of the two cities, and the straight-line distance from Bozhou City is only more than 20 kilometers.
Bozhou, Anhui is known as the "Chinese Medicine Capital", and it has "the world's largest trading market for Chinese herbal medicines".
A boss surnamed Chen, who is engaged in the wholesale business of Chinese medicinal materials in Bozhou, Anhui, told reporters that the earthworms he received were "basically wild", and the origins included Guangxi, Sichuan, Anhui, and Henan.
Most of these earthworms enter the pharmaceutical industry.
"As of 2021, the demand of Chinese patent medicine enterprises will account for 57.56%, the demand of Chinese herbal medicine companies will be about 28.52%, and exports, health products and others will account for about 13.92%." Jia Haibin, chief data analyst of Tiandi Yuntu Pharmaceutical Big Data Platform, told Zhong. According to a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily, there are 40 types of Chinese patent medicines that include Dilong. Among the Chinese patent medicines, the top three products in demand for Dilong include Suhuang Zhike Capsule, Naoxintong Capsule, Milk Block elimination.
The data provided by the platform also shows that the company with the No. 1 demand for Dilong is a pharmaceutical company in Shaanxi. Many of the company's products are concentrated in the field of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular drugs, of which "Naoxintong Capsule" is the company's product. , the company's official website information shows: this drug is "basic drug for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases".
The "China Cardiovascular Health and Disease Report 2021" released on June 23 shows that two out of every five deaths in my country are due to cardiovascular disease.
The report also shows that at present, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease in my country is in a stage of continuous increase, and it is estimated that the number of people with cardiovascular disease in my country is 330 million.
Globally, cardiovascular disease is regarded as the "number one killer".
Jia Haibin told reporters, "Aging has increased, and the demand for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular drugs has increased. In the past 10 years, the overall demand for (Dilong) has been rising." The exact data is that the market demand for Dilong has risen from 400 tons in 2010 to 675 tons in 2020.
"The proportion of wild capture is about 70%"
"(Dilong dosage) has been increasing year by year recently." A relevant person in charge of a Chinese herbal medicine company in Bozhou, Anhui told reporters that compared with 10 years ago, the use of Dilong has increased by 70 to 80 percent.
The company mainly produces Dilong Chinese herbal decoction pieces and Dilong formula granules, "mainly going to hospitals and pharmacies."
The relevant person in charge of the above-mentioned company told reporters that his company mainly uses Guangdilong, "basically no breeding".
"Because the Pharmacopoeia stipulates that there are only those 4 varieties."
The "Dilong" as a medicinal material in the 2020 edition of the "Chinese Pharmacopoeia" refers to the dried bodies of four species of earthworms of the vermiidae family, C. vulgaris, P. vulgaris, P. vulgaris, and C. blindness.
The former is called "Guangdi Dragon", and the latter three are called "Hudi Dragon".
The artificially cultured earthworms are mainly "Daping No. 2".
This is artificial selection and breeding, and the Daping No. 2 earthworm is not yet allowed to be used in traditional Chinese medicine, because this species of earthworm has not been included in the scope of use of the Chinese medicinal material "Dilong" in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia.
"90% of this widely farmed earthworm should be in the fishing industry."
Sun Zhenjun, a professor at the Department of Ecology, School of Resources and Environment, China Agricultural University, told reporters that Guangdilong is mainly produced in Guangdong, Guangxi, Hainan and other places, and Hudilong is mainly produced in Shanghai, Zhejiang, Henan and other places.
"Because there are very clear regulations in the "Chinese Pharmacopoeia". Before 2000, there was only one species, which was called Guangdilong, and the scientific name was ginseng hairworm. Later (this kind of earth dragon) became less and less." Sun Zhenjun said, "In 2000, the "Chinese Pharmacopoeia" added three species of Hudilong, which are a little wider than Guangdilong."
For more than 10 years, despite the huge demand for Dilong in the Chinese herbal medicine market, Guangdilong and Hudilong have not been able to achieve large-scale breeding.
"There is no breakthrough in technology, because it is too wild." Sun Zhenjun said that in Hainan, they found its main distribution area in Hainan by investigating the resource distribution of Guangdilong, and tried to protect the environment in situ, prompting Guangdilong ecological proliferation.
In Guangxi, the number of people who catch earthworms by electricity is decreasing, and the number of people who breed Guangdilong is increasing.
The 31-year-old Lu Fang started to breed Candida dragons in 2020. He has 7 mu of land and raises wild Candida dragons that he acquired. He is still slowly getting familiar with their living habits. If it is good, (net profit per mu of land) can reach 10,000 to 15,000 yuan.”
However, Lu Fang told reporters that there are many Guangdi dragon breeders nowadays, who are raising and harvesting wild ones at the same time, "making quick money." This phenomenon also exists in Yucheng, Henan.
The person in charge of a "Dilong Breeding Professional Cooperative" told reporters that she has "wild and farmed (earthworms)" here.
"Its reproduction rate cannot be compared with Daping No. 2." Sun Zhenjun said, "From the analysis of modern medicinal chemistry, (the two) are not very different."
Jia Liming also told reporters from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that in terms of protein content and active ingredient content, "artificially farmed earthworms are no worse than wild earthworms."
The market price of artificially cultured Daping No. 2 earthworm dried body is 60-80 yuan/kg, which is cheaper than wild earthworm, but many manufacturers dare not use it.
"Regular manufacturers (sources) are very formal. If they are not formal, they will break the law." Jia Liming said.
But a lumbrokinase extracted from this species of earthworm can be used in western medicine.
A western medicine for ischemic cerebrovascular disease - Lumbrokinase enteric-coated capsules (National Medicine Zhunzi H20044080) is a group of proteins extracted from artificially cultivated Aishin earthworms (that is, "Daping No. 2" earthworms). hydrolase.
In Jia Liming's view, artificially farmed earthworms are the greatest protection for wild earthworms.
"Because it doesn't belong to wild animals either, it doesn't damage the ecological environment."
"The use of earthworms is far from what some existing reports say. Traditional Chinese medicines are being used, and western medicines are being used. Health products, cosmetics, and food are all used." An expert who has been engaged in nature protection for a long time told reporters, " Through artificial breeding and breeding, it can protect wild earthworms." "The problem of protection should be solved by the problem of development."
But in fact, looking at the source of Dilong in the Chinese herbal medicine market, "Cultivation and semi-aquaculture (caught young sports fertilizer in the wild) account for about 30%, and wild capture accounts for about 70%." Jia Haibin told China Youth Daily China Youth Daily The reporter, in Guangdong and Guangxi, the traditional production areas of Guangdilong, due to the excessive capture of earthworm resources in recent years, "the output has declined year by year. There are only a few dozen people, and the number of acquisitions is decreasing.”
Jia Liming felt that he could try to include the artificially farmed "Daping No. 2" earthworms in the "Chinese Pharmacopoeia" and include them in the catalogue of Chinese medicinal materials to break the vicious circle caused by overfishing of wild earthworms, including soil and ecological damage.
Sun Zhenjun also supports its inclusion in the Pharmacopoeia.
"Transfer position"
For many years, in Yulin, Guangxi, the use of electric earthworms as medicinal materials "is a relatively common phenomenon", but now "there is less electricity".
Lu Fang, a farmer of Guangdilong, told reporters that when he was a child, earthworms were a few cents a pound. Some people in the village mixed tea cakes with water and poured them on places with many earthworms. "After a while, it will climb up and faint."
Between 2005 and 2008, locals began to use "water batteries" to power earthworms.
"Crazy electricity. At that time, those people could make a profit of 100,000 yuan or 200,000 yuan a year." Lu Fang said, "It will continue until about 2017, and then it will become less."
However, the market's demand for earth dragons has not decreased, and the price of earth dragons is still rising, and some people have begun to "shift their positions".
"Some processing households that have been buying all the year round have gone to Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou to develop new production areas in the past two years, and the acquisition volume of new production areas is still acceptable." Jia Haibin told reporters that some areas in Anhui, Henan, Hunan and other provinces have also Become a new production area of Dilong.
Judging from the number of Dilong origin suppliers in recent years, the top 10 are Guizhou, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Yunnan, Hunan, Hubei, Jiangxi, Hebei, Jiangsu and Henan.
In August 2021, Wanquan opened its earthworm processing factory to Xueshan Town, Weining County, Bijie City, Guizhou Province.
"Because the environment there is better. There are more mountains." Wan Quan said that the longest earthworm he had ever seen in Weining was more than 1 meter long.
So he brought 10 sets of Longyi to Weining and distributed the equipment to local farmers for free. The farmers caught wild earthworms on the mountain and sold them to him.
He also rented a local house, and hired workers to open, clean and dry the earthworms.
"(Weining) has been able to work until the New Year, unlike the strong seasonality in the north." Wan Quan told reporters.
In Weining County, prosecutor Li Ai had never seen such a large-scale looting of wild earthworms before.
Li Ai told a reporter from China Youth Daily and China Youth Daily that starting from July and August 2021, Dilong purchasers from Henan, Anhui, Sichuan and other places will come to Weining with Dilong Yi, and rent from the common people first in each place. Houses, and then send out the machine.
Li Ai said that in November last year, some forest rangers and villagers reported to the Forestry Bureau, Public Security Bureau and other departments that "someone was hitting earthworms on the mountain."
The Weining County Procuratorate learned about the situation at about the same time, and decided to study "how to deal with such a situation in accordance with the law." In the end, they decided to "save the earthworms" and filed a "public interest lawsuit" against people in the industry chain.
"There are about seven or eight towns with this situation." Li Ai told reporters that in one of the towns, there are often six or seven bosses who buy and process wild earthworms.
Most of the temporary workers in the processing sites are rural women in their 50s and 60s who are in charge of belly-opening and drying, while the people who go out to electric earthworms are mostly people in their 40s and 50s who stay in the village. There are both men and women, and there are fewer young people.
"There are also people who used to work outside and heard that there was a business in their hometown, and they came back to specialize in it." Li Ai said.
From the delivery records of a foreign buyer, Li Ai learned that the buyer sent 1,804 kilograms of dried earthworms from Weining from March 9 to May 31.
From the collection records of a local electric earthworm farmer, from March to June, "the value of the goods he sold has reached about 40,000 yuan."
In the past two months, Li Ai has been running around the mountains for public interest litigation, but he found that "saving earthworms" is difficult.
"They don't have legal awareness and feel that the thing is all underground anyway, and it doesn't seem to affect anything if it hits it. Anyway, it's not in their own land, but the benefits they earn are personal." Li Ai said, "We'll go down to investigate the process. Many ordinary people directly said, 'There is no law in the country, you can't forbid us to do this thing'."
Li Ai told reporters, "Actually, our country's laws have provisions, but they are too principled."
In the initial stage of preparing for the public interest litigation, they rummaged through the Wildlife Protection Law, the Environmental Protection Law, the Agricultural Law, and the Land Management Law. It's not in the Sanyou Animal List either."
They also invited the Public Security Bureau, the Environmental Protection Bureau, the Forestry Bureau, and the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Bureau to hold seminars to hear the opinions of the administrative organs.
"There was a lot of controversy, and no consensus was reached in the end." Li Ai told reporters, "All departments said that this thing has not been dealt with elsewhere. Is it a fine, detention, or confiscation of tools?"
When the procuratorate entered the "investigation and evidence collection stage", Li Ai found that "the subjects of the investigation were very resistant. Many people were unwilling to cooperate."
Sometimes, when the electric earthworms saw them, they walked up the mountain with their equipment. According to the rules of public interest litigation, they could not take coercive measures.
"After all, they are also instructed by others." Li Ai said, sometimes they go to find the buyer of the processing point, but the buyer often avoids seeing them, and even gets scolded when they meet them.
After two months of complex investigation and evidence collection, the Weining County Procuratorate has filed 6 civil public interest litigation cases for electric shock, acquisition and processing of earthworms.
However, Li Ai was worried that she could not reach a consensus with the judge on the application of the law and the quantification of ecological damage.
Previously, there was no precedent for civil public interest litigation cases filed by national procuratorial organs in the protection of earthworms.
In 2020, an environmental protection organization filed a public interest lawsuit against three home appliance earthworm machine manufacturers in Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province.
The first-instance judgment of the Intermediate Court of Zhuhai City, Guangdong Province held that earthworms are wild animals with an important position in the soil ecosystem, and the means of human economic use of them must be within a reasonable range.
Rongzhe Optoelectronics and other three companies sell electric earthworm machines, which enable buyers to hunt earthworms by electric shock, which is not conducive to the sustainable use of earthworms and the soil ecological environment.
This public interest litigation case, dubbed by the media as "the first electric earthworm machine case", finally reached the Higher People's Court of Guangdong Province.
The High Court rejected the appeals of the three companies and upheld the first-instance judgment.
Apart from the first exception that no procuratorial organ has filed a lawsuit, another concern of Li Ai is that since Dilong is involved in the traditional Chinese medicine industry, will it have an impact on the judicial organs' promotion of earthworm protection.
But he still hopes, "When people use natural resources, they must find a balance between utilization and protection."
"A vicious circle"
What Sun Zhenjun is worried about is the impact of the reduction of earthworms on the land.
"If everyone does this, it will have something to do with the quality of the farmland. There are no earthworms on the farmland. How can food be produced without good land?" Sun Zhenjun said, and then it involves the issue of biodiversity.
"Not only does it affect this earthworm, it also affects other soil organisms, soil nematodes, soil mites, and spiders."
"In fact, the role of earthworms in the ecosystem is very important." An expert who has been engaged in natural environmental protection for a long time told reporters, "(Electric earthworms) are also destructive to the ecosystem. Although they are not protected species, they are not precious. Endangered species, but it's a matter of biodiversity conservation."
Previously, when many media reported the phenomenon of electric earthworms, they described this behavior as "extinction hunting".
"Whether killing the earthworm is extinct, this needs further discussion." The above-mentioned nature conservation expert said that in his opinion, earthworms are extremely fecund and have a wide range of survival. "It's not like the number of giant pandas is limited." .
"It can't be said that it is 'extinction killing', and the damage caused by pesticides and fertilizers (to earthworms) may be wider in geographical scope."
But in this expert's view, this kind of (hunting) is problematic.
"The problem with the soil is the problem with the whole way of our land use. Electric earthworms are only one of the problems, the tip of the iceberg." The expert who has been engaged in natural environment protection for a long time told the China Youth Daily and China Youth Network reporter that earthworms also is the victim.
Sun Zhenjun also believes that the reduction of earthworms is a fact, and there are many reasons.
First, the extensive use of pesticides, fertilizers, herbicides, etc., has caused soil pollution to continue to intensify, reducing the population of wild earthworms; secondly, there is an increasing demand for Chinese herbal medicines for earthworms; There are even fewer earthworm populations.
"It's a vicious circle now," Sun Zhenjun said.
"We agricultural experts have long advocated fallow and crop rotation." The expert said, "We use the soil predatory. In fact, it's not just about the electric earthworms. What's more terrible is the herbicides that make the soil compact."
The use of wild earthworms will bring another problem: some of the heavy metals in Chinese medicine exceed the standard.
According to the notices issued by the food and drug administrations of various provinces, over the years, in the sampling inspection of drugs, there have often been cases of unqualified sampling inspections of "Dragon", and the unqualified items include "heavy metals".
The Sichuan Food and Drug Administration found in a random inspection in 2018 that the "impurities, acid-insoluble ash, total ash, and heavy metals" of Dilong sold by Sichuan Fufeng Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. to the health center in Jiepai Town, Weiyuan County were unqualified.
In 2015, a batch of Dilong sold by Bozhou Guoyuan Chinese Herbal Decoction Pieces Co., Ltd. to Zhangqiu Central Health Center in Yanggu County was detected and found to be "not in compliance", and the non-compliant items also included heavy metals.
"In fact, all departments have the responsibility and obligation to protect the diversity of life, but we often think that the protection of biological diversity is only a matter of the competent department of protection, which is one-sided." The nature conservation expert believed that "the utilization department should take the initiative to take the initiative. Responsibility for sustainable use and protection of resources. If the Chinese medicine department does not think about it in advance, it will block the way of traditional Chinese medicine.”
Wanquan also heard some rumors about "banning the electric trapping of earthworms", but in many places, "there are still quite a lot of people doing it secretly."
In 2021, Wanquan stayed in Weining for a month, handed over the processing point to his brother, and went to the earthworm processing point opened in Xuzhou, Jiangsu.
In the second half of this year, Wanquan plans to go to Shaanxi, "because Shaanxi is a new source of goods that just joined last year."
Wanquan's older brother is in Weining, where he continues to recycle earthworms and process them to dry them.
He is also making another plan: preparing to open an earthworm farm next year.
"If one day the country only needs to say, don't use earthworms anymore, I will stop it immediately." Wan Quan said, "You can't use electricity, you have to think about the way back, because it is a tight product in the first place."
(Liu Yulian, Wan Quan and Lu Fang are all pseudonyms in the text)
China Youth Daily, China Youth Daily reporter Li Qiang Source: China Youth Daily