Fogonazos: China tiger farms

Located in northern China, the Siberian Tiger Park is the largest natural park for wild Siberian tigers in the world, and one of the most horrible places all over the planet. Thousands of tourists come everyday to this park, most of them interested in the bloody spectacle of tigers savaging live goats and cows. Because, for entertainment, visitors to the animal park can watch the 'live killing exhibition', a sick spectacle in which animals are 'hunted' and torn to pieces by tigers while onlookers cheer.

And that's not the worst part: visitors can also buy poultry or animals to feed the tigers themselves, including ducks, chickens, and even cows. Then, park employees will set the living animal free among the tigers, and visitors can see the "unique live action of tigers preying upon it".

In China the transformation of this jungle predator into a caged farm animal is becoming a dramatic fact. There are almost 200 farms of this kind in all the country, where an estimated 4,000 captive tigers are daily bred in order to sell its body parts. Consumers pay high prices for remedies, tonics and aphrodisiacs, as China has been using tigers for medicinal purposes for 5,000 years. The Chinese believe that the tiger's strength passes into the wine as its body decomposes. They also believe that it is a powerful medicine that wards off arthritis, strengthens bones and acts as a general tonic.

Although China committed to the ban on trading in tiger parts in 1993, now - under pressure from the owners of farms - it reportedly wants the prohibition amended to allow the sale of parts from farmed tigers. Conservationists say tiger farming is not only barbaric, it could lead to the animal's extinction in the wild. If present trends continue, tigers could be extinct in the wild within a decade. Three subspecies have already vanished. Chinese tigers are down to a pitiful 20 animals in the wild and are "functionally extinct".