An investigation has been launched by Chinese authorities regarding a banquet in Guangxi Province that allegedly served pangolin meat, Chinese local media reported according to BBC.
The main question investigators aim to answer is whether or not officials were the ones responsible behind the banquet, which was held in 2015.
Anger and outcry erupted when pictures from the banquet, which were uploaded on Sina Weibo by a user called Ah_cal back in July 2015, began making the rounds on the Internet. The post, which has since been deleted, included pictures of what seems to be a posh Chinese feast, with one picture an up-close shot of cooked meat.
According to Ah_cal’s post, the feast was organized by local officials. “Cooked pangolin was served to us to eat.”
“It was my first time eating it, the taste was very good, and I have already deeply fallen in love with this taste of wildlife,” Ah_cal described the experience in the post.
Just recently, it was revealed that the individual behind the username Ah_cal was a Hong Kong businessman named Calvin Lee Ka-wo. According to Chinese news outlets, Lee Ka-wo was part of a group of entrepreneurs who visited Nanning in Guangxi to explore local business opportunities.
The Guangxi Investment Promotion Bureau has since admitted that it has received a business delegation in 2015. The officials denied, however, holding any such feast that served pangolin meat.
“We have diligently identified the diners in the photographs, and none of them belong to Guangxi Investment Promotion Bureau’s leadership or its staff,” a bureau spokesman reportedly told Chengdu Shangbao, a local newspaper outlet.
People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Communist Party, published a commentary criticizing Guangxi authorities. It also offered that the banquet may have been organized by a different provincial government department.
“The pangolin’s scales are so hard, while the response of the officials is so weak--with such a clear contrast, it is hard to dispel the doubts that have broken out.”
Pangolin, an endangered species, is listed as one of the most trafficked animals in the world, according to the BBC. Roasted pangolin scales are believed to be useful in detoxification in traditional Chinese medicine.