In A Nutshell
Despite a ban on trade in anything made from the big cats that has stood since 1993, China has a vibrant trade in wine and spirits made using tiger bones. The tiger parts are soaked in the liquid for a period of time, and the resulting liquid is sold for hundreds of dollars per bottle. In some secret auctions, the more expensive crates can go for over $30,000. The trade is supplied by tiger farms, and around 6,000 tigers are kept in captivity across the country. The farms are officially tourist attractions, but the big cats end up being slaughtered, with their meat sold as food and their bones going to the drinks trade.
The Whole Bushel
Tigers are extremely endangered. WWF puts the number left in the wild at an estimated 5,711 in 2025, a rising figure but still a sliver of the 100,000 or so that roamed Asia at the start of the twentieth century. The number in captivity in China is around 6,000, by the count of the Environmental Investigation Agency. That would be great if they were there for their own good. Unfortunately, many are simply bred to feed the lucrative demand for tiger bone wine, which is exactly what it sounds like. The bones of dead tigers are soaked in wine and sold as medicine. One animal park, Xiongsen Bear & Tiger Zoo, was found to be serving tiger meat as a snack and dropping the rest of the body into vats of wine.
Traditional Chinese medicine recommends the brew for a number of ailments. Arthritis and bone problems have an obvious superficial link. One Beijing auction catalogue pitched tiger liquors as a way to “stave off chills, improve circulation and eliminate fatigue.” Tiger bone was struck from China’s official pharmacopoeia in 1993. In 2010 the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies, which represents member bodies in 57 countries, urged its members to stop using tiger bone and other endangered wildlife. Some of the medicinal claims made for tiger bone, the federation said, “have no basis.”
The wine can sell for over $800 per bottle. For comparison, the average income of a family in China was $2,100 in 2012. The country’s wealthy middle-class patrons are the target. At that sale, held in Beijing in December 2011, cases of tiger bone wine and similar tonics carried starting prices running from 5,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan, then worth about £500 to £20,000.
The whole thing is illegal, though the law itself has wobbled. All sales of tiger products were banned in China in 1993 by an order of the State Council, and even selling products created before the ban came into place is against the law. In October 2018 the State Council replaced that order with one permitting bone from farmed tigers to be used in medical research and in clinical treatment at approved hospitals. The reaction at home and abroad was fierce enough that within weeks a senior official said the new rules were on hold, and restated three strict bans covering import and export, domestic trade and transport, and use in medicine.
Nothing has settled since. The 2018 order was never formally revoked, and the agency, a London-based organization that is among the groups putting pressure on officials to stop the auctions, points out that the State Council still lists it as current policy. China’s revised Wildlife Protection Law, in force since May 2023, keeps a permit system under which protected species may be bred and traded commercially for purposes such as medicine, and it says nothing explicit about tigers raised on farms. As of mid 2026, then, selling tiger bone wine remains prohibited, while the question of what may legally be done with the bones of a farmed tiger is still open.
The pressure does land sometimes. Conservation groups had flagged that December auction to the government, and on the day of the sale the State Forestry Administration ordered the auction house to stop it. A Guardian reporter sitting in the room identified himself and began asking staff why the lots were legal. A few minutes later the auctioneer announced that the tiger wine was postponed. One disappointed customer commented that “it’s really good stuff, but I haven’t been able to buy any for a long time.”
Show Me The Proof
Scientific American: Wine Made from Tiger Bones
The Guardian: ‘It’s really good stuff’: undercover at a Chinese tiger bone wine auction
China allowing sale of tiger bone wine
EIA: Tiger farming in China
WWF: wild tiger numbers
TRAFFIC: TCM societies reject tiger bone
