A biotech firm has managed to 3D print rhino horns as part of a bid to curb poaching. Pembient, a startup based in San Francisco, plans to flood the Chinese market with the synthetic horns which carry the same genetic fingerprint as the real thing. The firm uses keratin and rhino DNA to produce a dried powder which is then 3D printed to look similar to original horns, a digital journal reported.
The company also plans to release a beer brewed with the synthetic horns later this year.
The black market trade in rhino horns is very lucrative. The high demand is fuelling the astronomical price of the animal's horn and could very well cause the extinction of the rhinoceros.
In South Africa, which has the largest rhino population of any country , poachers took an average of three a day in 2014, up from one a month in 2007. Save the Rhino's most recent figures put the number of southern white rhinos at 20,405. Just five northern white rhinos remain.
Black rhinos, on the critically endangered list, number just 5,055 and one sub species is already extinct. Two of the three Asian species are also classed as critically endangered and number less than 100 animals each.
In China and Vietnam, rhino horn is used as a lifestyle drug and it is commonly believed to posses benefits that can cure health problems, ranging from hangovers to cancer. It is this cultural belief that means rhino horns will fetch up to $65,000 per kilo on the black market.
According to Matthew Markus, CEO of Pembient, the company will sell the horns at a fraction of the price of real horns, undercutting poachers to force them out of the market. He later aims to recreate other animal products in the lab including elephant tusk.
He said, the company hopes to produce rhino horn so biologically similar to wild horn -but at about one tenth of black market costs -that buyers and illegal traders will switch, thereby curtailing relentlessly increasing poaching levels.
"We can produce a rhinoceros horn product that is actually more pure than what you can get from a wild animal," Markus told the digital journal.
However, Conservation groups have voiced concern over the plans, saying that although Pembient may have good intentions, there is a danger that flooding the market with fake rhino horns could increase demand for real ones. Susie Ellis, executive director of International Rhino Foundation, told Quartz: "Selling synthetic horn does not reduce the demand for rhino horn (and) could increase the demand for `the real thing'. Questions arise as to how law enforcement authorities will be able to detect the difference between synthetic and real horn, especially if they are sold as powder or in manufactured products."
