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FAKE tiger penises are on sale in a Hong Kong market, despite an international ban aimed at preventing their sale.

  Hawkers are side-stepping the law by not labelling the goods and only confiding their identity after being convinced the customer is genuine.

  Genuine examples of the animal parts are regarded in Chinese medical circles as a powerful aphrodisiac. They have been known to fetch thousands of dollars from those hoping to perk up their sex lives.

  But the high cost of real tiger penises has led to a burgeoning market in the production of fakes.

    The executive director of the World Wide Fund for Nature, David Melville, says a number of factories have sprouted up in China producing near-perfect replicas of the real thing. He had also heard of one in Hong Kong, near Yuen Long.

  The South China Morning Post spotted a hawker in Cat Street market, Central, selling 10 items he claimed were tiger penises for just $20 apiece.

   One was bought, and a subsequent investigation identified it as a fake. The object was riddled with maggots, posing a health hazard to anyone making soup from it.

  When confronted, the hawker, who had been conversing in English, suddenly claimed not to understand the language and refused to answer questions.

   The Fauna Conservation Officer in charge of enforcing the endangered species ordinance, So Ping-man, said it is very difficult to enforce the ban because hawkers did not label their goods.

  ''It is not illegal to make them so long as they don't claim they are tiger parts. It is not harming the tiger population,'' he said.

  Hawkers who are arrested selling the goods face a maximum fine of $25,000 for a first conviction.



Aphrodisiac fails tiger test