© China Daily/ReutersA dead tiger found during a police raid in Wenzhou, Zhejiang province, last January. Trafficking and habitat destruction have cut tiger populations from about 100,000 a century ago to about 3,000 today.
More than 10 tigers have been killed as "visual feasts" in China to entertain officials and rich business people, state media reported.
Police in the port city of Zhanjiang, in the southern province of Guangdong, seized a freshly slaughtered tiger and multiple tiger products in a raid this month, said the
Nanfang Daily, the mouthpiece of the provincial Communist Party.
Local officials and prominent businesspeople gathered to watch the tigers being killed as "eye-openers" to show off their social stature, it said. Video footage of a killing two years ago showed the tiger, kept in an iron cage, having an electrified iron mass prodded into its mouth with a wooden stick and passing out after being electrocuted for more than 10 seconds, the paper said.
An experienced cattle or pig slaughterer is normally hired to butcher the carcass, it said, adding that tiger bones sold for an average of 14,000 yuan (£1,360) a kilo while the meat fetched 1,000 yuan a kilo.
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