Prosecutors in the city of Qinzhou said the defendant, identified only as Xu, “has a quirky appetite for eating tiger penis and drinking tiger blood,” Xinhua said.

From March to May last year, Xu, a real estate developer, and several accomplices made three trips to neighbouring Guangdong Province, where he bought three live tigers and had them slaughtered, according to the report. The tigers were all smuggled from outside China, Xinhua said, without specifying the source.

Another 14 defendants, including a smuggler, were tried with Xu and they confessed to having killed “more than 10 tigers over the past few years.”

The trial took place two months after the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress issued a new interpretation of an existing ban on trade in endangered species that said that eating a tiger or other wild animal covered by the national wildlife protection law would be considered a form of trade and punishable by prison terms of 10 or more years.

Conservationists say that Chinese demand for tiger products — meat, bones and skins — is driving poaching in and around the country. Tiger bone is valued as an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine to treat joint pain, while tiger skins are considered a status symbol.

There are fewer than 50 wild tigers in China, according to the Environmental Investigative Agency, an advocacy group based in London.