HB 1374: Foreign Animal Products Act (Passed)

[Mr. Reactionary]

So certain unscientific superstitious medical beliefs hold that grinding up certain animal parts cures certain diseases (Think ground tiger penis to cure erectile dysfunction or hornet venom to cure anemia). Many of these beliefs are especially popular in China and their growing middle class has led to the extreme destruction of animal populations to fill their demand for fake pills. Many vendors in these products also engage in fraudulent labeling. (How can you verify that there is REALLY menstrual blood of a virgin in that pill). I think it would be in the best interest of consumers and animals to expressly prohibit imports of some of these products. Specifically:

- Human products are fraught with issues, such as the safety of importing pills containing unscreened blood, cum, and poop that could very well contain HIV or some other disease. Plus the high potential for fraudulent labeling and the ethical concerns of where human bones, fetal tissue pills, or human organ pills come from in a country filled with prison camps.

- Endangered species containing products are probably already covered by existing law but it seemed to make sense to include them just to clarify that pills containing ground up bits of tigers or rhinos are just as illegal as poached trophies. There is also a clarification that this is not changing existing rules for importing lawful hunting trophies or ivory, which are already heavily restricted but legal in a few circumstances.

- Apparently deer penis is used as medicine and wikipedia insisted the penis is supposed to be removed while the deer is alive. This is cruel so unless the importer can verify through chain of custody that the deer penis was removed after death, the import of those would be banned.

- The bear bile is the main product I want banned. They were killing a ton of bears just to get their gallbladders. Then they had the evil idea to capture live bears and install pumps to milk their gallbladders until they died. This is very painful for the bears and the argument of the vendors is that torturing a few bears is better than killing a bunch of bears. Its a disgusting practice and there is apparently footage of a mama bear escaping from her cage in one of the Chinese bear bile factories, killing her cub and then herself to escape the torture. We should not be allowing that stuff come here.

- Pangolins are all endangered or threatened, but just in case they rebound and can be removed from the endangered species list they would still be protected under this law.

- Tigers are all endangered or threatened, but just in case they rebound and can be removed from the endangered species list they would still be protected under this law.

- Rhinos are all endangered or threatened, but just in case they rebound and can be removed from the endangered species list they would still be protected under this law.

- Many of the toads secretions are toxic and with no accurate dosage or measurements of the toxins this could be dangerous.

- Sea turtles are all endangered or threatened but just in case they rebound and can be removed from the endangered species list they would still be protected under this law.

- Not all seahorses are endangered or threatened but recent trends related to these hoodoo "medicines" have seen noticeable declines in sea horse population near China.

- Shark Fins were largely outlawed last summer but this is just to reemphasize that shark fin pills are similarly outlawed.

- Blister beetles, centipedes, hornet venom, and scorpion venom are all toxic and with no accurate dosage or measurements of the toxins this could be dangerous.

- Pufferfish/Porcupine bladders are often collected from the dead fish after forcing them while alive to painfully stretch for longer than they should.

- A catchall for animal products from animals who suffered significant pain as a result of the harvest.

- And I added in monkey paws, since they dont actually grant wishes and harvesting the limbs of primates for nonexistent wishes is bad policy.


Aside from the animal product bans this also proposes to reduce the size of allowable driftnets used in fishing. These limits are more stringent than the UN limit of 2 KM to which Atlasia is not a party. Driftnets kill unnecessary amounts of noncommercial fish and also some marine mammals.