mswas, how do game reserves stifle competition? Game on a reserve only goes to market as a result of poaching.
So far, people have mentioned Taiwan, China, and Texas. All of these places, according to other posters have no wild tiger populations at this time. I have no idea if this is true or not. Except Texas, which I’m pretty sure about. My understanding is that most wild tigers live in India.
No argument there. It’s been my contention for the better part of a decade that poppy cultivation for the pharmaceutical industry would be a great boon for the Afghan economy and probably help regional stability. You said “Legal tiger farms will then help to catch poachers…” I pointed out that legal opium farms don’t help to catch illegal opium growers. Now you say they should contract with them instead. I agree. However this has nothing to do with your failure to produce an example of what you say legal farmers will do.
My statement has little to do with whether tiger or liquor is illegal. You said “Legal tiger farms will then help to catch poachers…” I pointed out that legal liquor producers don’t help to catch illegal moonshiners. As you point out, they do PR, though, and I guess to one could make an argument that PR helps catch moonshiners in some way, damned if I know how. If you want to call that making your point, go ahead.
Neither do I. I brought it up only to deflect the potential of someone claiming it is.
Given that we’re dealing with trade in illegal items, you can’t very well take your bag of powdered tiger bone down to the lab and have it tested. Don’t you suppose the majority of processed tiger parts today probably aren’t tiger at all, much less freshly-killed wild tiger?
This is a product that’s significantly less verifiable than illegal drugs–if you buy a bag of oregano, you’ll find out fast that it isn’t dope. But since tiger bones don’t actually do anything anyway, the placebo value of cow bones is probably equivalent. You could have a regular customer for years who never knows he’s not getting tiger.
I’m sure there are wealthier consumers who buy the whole tiger, or “hide on” chunks so they know what they’re getting, but that can’t be very many.
So, in other words, why bother farming tigers? Just farm pigs and sell pig parts as tiger parts (obviously, this won’t work for claws, hides, and penii, but how much of the market is that?).
I’m assuming that the traders in such commodities already have some test or trust relationship by which they acquire present supplies. Even if this is already 90% adulterant, surely they will be suspicious of your newly offered product.
So first somebody has to open at least one tiger farm somewhere, to explain the new, greatly enhanced supply (whatever the price).
Than you and I go in on a pig farm!
(Step 3 - wealth!)
On second thought, let’s make it zebras instead of pigs. That way, we can leave bits of pelt and say it was a white tiger.
A reserve theoretically with some outside funding, and funding from tourism can protect the animals on the preserve by vigorously pursuing poachers. Supposedly Rwanda because of the embrace of using their Gorillas for tourism has significantly cut down on the poaching of Gorillas because the tourism industry is more lucrative.
Hehe, I know where John Stossel lives. 
With reported ‘street values’ of up to $2000.00 per pound, serious traders have chemical tests they can perform to verify the species of the bone dust they are buying, much as serious drug dealers have test kits to verify the purity of drugs they are buying. All the more ironic since pig bones really would be as effective as tiger bones for the various remedies they are used for. But the existence of these tests does prove your theory - someone has already thought of it. You have to get up pretty early in the morning to come up with a new idea to capitalize on superstitions.
Frankly, I doubt I personally could tell a tiger penis from a boar penis when not attached to the animal (if still attached, I think I could figure it out). I bet I don’t know anybody else who could, either.
Is this correct? The latest tiger documentary I watched stated that a tiger can eat up to 30 kg of meat in one sitting, and feeds again within eight days or so. So it’d add up to app. 65 lbs. per week or about 3000 lbs. per year. Still a lot of meat and money.
See post 57.
It depends a lot on the temperature. Tigers in cold climates need to eat more than tigers in warm climates. Naturally they don’t eat X lbs. of meat per day every day. They gorge themselves on up to 100lbs of meat or more at a sitting and then don’t eat for days at a time. Sometimes they hunt out of opportunity sooner than they might if times were tough. It obviously varies wildly depending on circumstances but 20 to 40 lbs per day averaged out over time is a description I found on several authoritative looking web sites (I will gather cites if I must but a google for “tiger diet” should probably find them among the top). A simple calculation using the highest possible of the two is bound to yield an inflated value but the point remains; tigers eat a lot compared to how much meat a slaughtered tiger could yield. In a warm climate in the wild, probably somewhere around 50 60-100 lb. sized meals or 3000-5000 lbs. per year. But I will concede that captive tigers have much lower dietary requirements since they are cooped up in small areas and don’t need to exercise to get their food so any such calculations should assume lower. But it’s still considerably more than it is worth to farm tigers for food.
Sorry, when I wrote post 57 I failed to include a link. Here is the one I used to posit an average dietary requirement of 6 pounds per day. link
This doesn’t really change anything, of course.