Legal tiger farming in China for bone products creates welfare concerns for thousands of captive tigers while potentially stimulating demand threatening wild populations.
Farmed tigers are kept in intensive conditions with limited space, enrichment and social structures appropriate to their behavioural needs. Slaughter for bones involves killing methods that may not prioritise welfare. The psychological needs of tigers — among the largest and most behaviourally complex felids — cannot be met in intensive farm conditions. Individual tiger welfare in farming operations is severely compromised even before considering conservation implications of the trade.