Stop Poaching: Petition

Petition by: Darragh Campbell

Dear Simon Birmingham

I’m campaigning against animal poaching and my goal is to raise awareness against poaching that is mainly happening over in Africa. I’m respectfully asking you to ensure that labelling on alternative medicines imported from Asia is complete and accurate. This is important because in recent years products have been tested here in Australia and have been found to include traces of endangered animals.

DNA testing of traditional Chinese medicines has shown that many contain traces of endangered animals. The tests were performed by Australian scientists devising new ways to detect exactly what plant and animal materials are contained in traditional Chinese medicines and herbal teas. In the past some have been found to contain materials from endangered species, banned medicines and even toxic metals. Some samples were found to contain DNA from potentially harmful plants, and from endangered species such as black bears and antelope. Not all the samples that contained animal DNA had been labelled as containing material from animals and I feel that this isn’t checked up on. The snow leopard is a fine example of materials used within medicines illegally, currently there are only 7000 snow leopards left in the wild. If this doesn’t change animals are going to go extinct without some of us knowing since it isn’t stated on certain medicinal material, illegal animal materials are making its way in without us knowing, some animal materials used in products don’t actually create benefits for the item and can almost be useless.

If more was done to ensure no imported ‘medicines’ contain endangered species, less animals would be killed for medicines that don’t work. This could show the extinction rate of animals. You should act on this as I believe you could successfully oversee/stop the importation of illegal medicines into our country. I believe you would be able to stop this as you are the Minister for Trade, Tourism and Investment and this is your role. This needs to be stopped innocent animals are being killed for the sake of medicine that doesn’t help anyone. Please support this campaign by considering this request.

Petition: Stop Poaching

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