Gou Shen

The exposure risk is documented in the population that handles this material. Among 406 professional dog slaughterers in northern Vietnam, 84.7% had no rabies neutralising antibody, and 7.8% had detectable antibody with no vaccination history, which the authors interpret as inapparent exposure to rabies virus antigen during slaughtering. The conclusion was that dog butchers are at high risk of rabies virus infection independently of bites. That risk sits with anyone handling raw dog carcass material, which includes the preparation of this drug from an unprocessed source. The finished dried drug is not the concern; the supply chain is.

Dogs entering the meat trade carry a measurable pathogen load. Screening of Nigerian free-ranging dogs traded for meat detected canine circovirus DNA in 14% and canine distemper virus RNA in 17% of animals. Those particular agents are not human pathogens, but they are a direct index of how such animals are sourced and of the absence of veterinary screening in this supply chain, which also carries Brucella canis, Echinococcus and enteric organisms. There is no pharmacopoeial specification, no sterilisation standard and no batch testing for this drug.

CITES does not apply to this drug, and the reason is worth stating precisely rather than assuming. Canis lupus is CITES-listed, in Appendix I for some populations and Appendix II otherwise, but the listing is annotated to exclude the domesticated form: the wildlife trade schedules record that it excludes the domesticated form and the dingo, referenced as Canis lupus familiaris and Canis lupus dingo. A drug from the domestic dog therefore falls outside CITES altogether. What constrains it instead is food, animal welfare and veterinary law, and that has tightened sharply. China's Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs omitted dogs from the National Catalogue of Livestock and Poultry Genetic Resources published on 29 May 2020, the positive list of 33 species that may be bred, raised, transported and traded commercially, with the accompanying statement that dogs have become companion animals and are not internationally regarded as livestock. Shenzhen and Zhuhai legislated bans on the sale and consumption of dog meat in 2020, Shenzhen's effective 1 May 2020. Hong Kong prohibits the slaughter of dogs for food, Taiwan's Animal Protection Act was amended in 2017 to ban consumption of dog and cat meat, and the United States enacted a federal prohibition on the dog and cat meat trade in 2018. The practical consequence is that a drug still listed in older materia medica no longer has a lawful commercial source in much of its historical range.