Fiona Harvey reports that, despite restrictions in place since 1989, illegal ivory is being sold across Europe (Report, 10 July). Nothing more clearly demonstrates the significance of the widely welcomed ivory bill currently passing though parliament.
However, the impression given in the pages of Hansard suggests that many MPs cannot distinguish between culturally significant works of art created over the millennia, and the knick-knacks sold online (which they often cite)and other popular outlets. The elimination of the market for trinkets is unequivocally supported by campaigners for bona fide, pre-1947 works of art. It is hoped that when the bill becomes law, appropriate consideration will be given to the regulations required to ensure its fair operation.
The elephant must be saved, but so too should the appreciation, ownership and trade in this artistic element of our universal inheritance.
Martin Levy
H Blairman & Sons, London
• Demand from China is particularly high because the middle classes there like to offer ivory pieces as high-prestige gifts. Is it consumer ignorance that’s to blame, or just human vanity? People in the UK buy low-cost meat that comes from factory farms forced by the supermarkets to produce food as cheaply as possible. No one needs to buy meat at such low prices, but people think they have the right to it.
They haven’t – any more than people have the right to buy a product obtained from slaughtered elephants. I suspect many Chinese buying their high-prestige gifts are as aware of the barbarity of the ivory trade as British consumers are of the iniquities of factory farming. They just choose not to think.
Cecilia Grayson
Leicester
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