The New Express newspaper said Thursday that the panel of experts under the State Administration of Forestry on Wednesday approved most of the 40 species of domesticated game animals listed by Guangdong Province, paving the way for the administration to give its final approval.

As national and local lawmakers are drafting laws to ban consumption of wildlife, authorities are considering lists of farmed wildlife that can be legally eaten or used for research, medical and recreational purposes.

The newspaper said the Guangdong list was expected to be approved by the administration soon.

The list includes civet cat, which has been at the center of a heated debate among scientists over whether the corona virus, or the SARS virus, originated from the animal.

The ministry experts who supported the list said civet cats had been farmed in China for a long time and there had been no conclusive evidence linking the mammal to the deadly, mysterious SARS virus.

Civet cats have been eaten in Guangdong as a popular delicacy in recent years. The animal has disappeared from most wet markets in the province following the disclosure of the virus research findings.

Shenzhen and Hong Kong researchers announced in May that genetic sequencing found the corona virus found in civet cats taken from a market in Shenzhen had a 99 percent similarity with the human SARS virus.

However, researchers from the China Agricultural University said in June that they had found no SARS-like virus in their studies of 732 samples of wild animals, which were collected from Beijing, Guangdong and another five areas.

The Guangdong list also includes boar, spotted deer, turtle, pheasant, African ostrich, blue peacock and partridge.

(Shenzhen Daily July 18, 2003)