Pangolin, the most trafficked animal in the world, which is the likely intermediate host of SARS-CoV-2. Every year, approximately 100.000 individual pangolins are poached from the wild to supply illegal domestic and international trade, primarily in their scales, which are used for traditional medicine, and meat, which is considered a delicacy. Pangolins are nocturnal insect-eating mammals living in the forests of Asia and Africa. Pangolins have long been hunted for food and traditional medicine across Asia and West and Central Africa. In Ghana, for example, people traditionally use different parts (scales, bones, head, and meat) for different purposes including spiritual protection, rheumatisms, infertility, and convulsions, while the meat was used for preparing charms for chiefs or tribal leaders. In Sierra Leone, the scales, head, meat, and tail are prevalently used for food as well as for spiritual protection and to treat skin diseases and digestive problems. Pangolins and their scales are similarly used (e.g., to ward off evil spirits and witchcraft) in Nigeria and in Benin, as well as across India and Pakistan.
In China, pangolins are highly sought after for traditional medicine and as food .This demand causes over-exploitation that, coupled with habitat loss, threatens the very survival of the species used. Pangolin scales are regarded as a medicinal panacea (like rhino horns, and like rhino horns they are made of keratin), and their meat is considered a delicacy. The demand for pangolins in China is met by an illegal trade that is lucrative and on the rise, lately attracting wildlife traffickers who used elephant ivory as their prime generator of profits. The demand for pangolin meat and scales, due to increasing conspicuous consumption by the Asian middle class, has driven pangolins to the verge of extinction. From all forested corners of the tropics, pangolins are transported to Asian markets, where stressed and likely immune depressed pangolins are caged with many other species, and also with their own pathogens. This has emptied forests of pangolins: a steady decrease of pangolins, and wildlife in general, in African forests has been reported by local hunters and traditional healers in studies in Southwestern Nigeria and in Cameroon
The pangolin is prized as a delicacy in China, especially in the Southern and Eastern part of the country. According to Challender et al. this culinary practice is attested to by historical sources dating back to the 12th century CE: in present-day Jiangxi Province, Chinese pangolin meat was common street food during wintertime, cooked in lees from fermented rice wine. A popular recipe from the mountain village of Zhu Yu, dating back to the 16th century CE, consisted of curing pangolin meat in salt for two days before boiling it in water. Nowadays, pangolin is served in high-end restaurants in urban cities, mostly in Anuhi, Fujian, Jiangxi, Guangxi, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangzhou, Guangdong, and Guangxi provinces.
Once the order is placed, the animal may be hammered until it is unconscious and then slaughtered in front of the customers as a guarantee of the meat’s freshness. Some other time instead the animal is smuggled to the restaurant already dead and preserved in ice. Blood is drained and usually given to the customer to bring home. The dead animal is placed in hot water to remove the scales and the meat is cut into small pieces, which then may be boiled, stewed, braised, or steamed.
Chopped pangolin meat is usually stewed with Chinese wine, other meat including chicken or pork, and medicinal herbs such as Ligusticum striatum, Tetrapanax papyrifer, Stemmacantha, and Akebia spp. In Shenzhen (Guangdong Province), pangolin meat is served in hot pot. Pangolin meat is also an ingredient of “eight animal stew”, a dish made from animals like pangolin, swan, and snake simmered together for five hours, and a soup prepared with pangolin meat and caterpillar fungus (Ophiocordyceps sinensis).
Several recipes including pangolin meat are prepared in Fujan gastronomy. In the western mountainous area, pangolin meat is steamed, simmered, and served/covered with a gelatinized sauce made with onion, soy sauce, ginger, Shaoxing wine, chicken soup, and Danggui (Angelica sinensis roots). A soup is also prepared by boiling the meat, which is served with pieces of pangolin tongue. In the villages of the Yunnan–Guizhou Plateau (Yunnan and Guizhou provinces), a pangolin and chestnut stew is part of the local cuisine. Besides meat, pangolin fetuses are eaten in soup.Moreover, baby pangolins are boiled in rice wine to brew a tonic and the blood is used as an ingredient in pangolin-blood fried rice.
