O Companies benefitting from making synthetic horn have shown very little commitment to use their profits to help the core problem of rhino poaching besides which, those profits would meet only a tiny fraction of the total rhino protection costs that would remain to be met as long as demand reduction campaigns falter, as they would with the marketing of synthetic horn. O How can consumers and law enforcement officials distinguish between legal synthetic horn that looks real, and illegal real horn? O It will take time to develop synthetic horn and meanwhile the poaching crisis continues. O The availability of legal synthetic horn could normalise or remove the stigma from buying illegal real horn. ![]() O Users buy from trusted sources and value “the real thing.” ![]() O Synthetic horn could give credence to the notion that rhino horn has medicinal value, which is not supported by science. O More than 90% of “rhino horns” in circulation are fake (mostly carved from buffalo horn or wood), but poaching rates continue to rise annually. ![]() O Selling synthetic horn does not reduce the demand for rhino horn or dispel the myths around rhino horn and could indeed lead to more poaching because it increases demand for “the real thing” We are opposed to the development, marketing and sale of synthetic rhino horn : ![]() elephant ivory, lion bones or pangolin scales." In that statement, both groups expressed their opposition to the introduction of fake rhino horn to international markets: The International Rhino Foundation (IRF) and Save the Rhino International (SRI) issued a joint statement after "monitoring the progress of four US-based companies that have announced their intentions - with varying degrees of success - to produce synthetic or bio-fabricated rhino horn, and occasionally also other products including e.g.
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