Police investigate Chinese blogger after 'cooking and eating endangered great white shark'
1 August 2022, 16:45
A Chinese blogger is under police investigation after sharing a video where she cooked and ate an endangered great white shark.
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The woman, known as Tizi, shared a video to her 7.8 million followers on Chinese streaming channel Douyin showing her picking up the shark at a seafood shop in Nanchong, south west China.
She then proceeded to halve the two-metre long carcass, barbecue the tail and boil the head.
"It may look vicious, but its meat is truly super tender," she said in the video.
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She claimed the animal was a hooktooth shark bred in captivity and so it was edible.
But a police probe has established it was actually a great white shark, a species considered endangered in China.
Local media reports the police also found she did not buy the animal from the shop like she claimed, but instead bought it online and used the local shop as a venue for the film.
Hunting and eating wildlife is quickly falling out of favour in China as a result of the Covid pandemic, which is widely thought to have originated at a livestock market in the country.
In February 2020 an Act was passed outlawing the trade of illegal wildlife and "the bad habits of eating wild animals" - the strictest law of its kind in China's history.
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But it is not the first time video bloggers in the country have filmed themselves cooking and eating wildlife in order to get views.
Last year a man was arrested after he filmed himself eating a protected species of sea snail.
Tizi herself has previously been accused of eating a crocodile tail to get views.
