'Unfair Game' lays bare South Africa’s cruel ‘canned lion’ industry

Bruce Whitfield interviews Michael Ashcroft about his book, a painful read about the miserable fate of SA's captive-bred lions.

Every week The Money Show’s Bruce Whitfield asks a great business mind to review a trending business book.

This week Whitfield interviewed British businessman and philanthropist Lord Michael Ashcroft.

Ashcroft is the author of “Unfair Game: An exposé of South Africa’s captive-bred lion industry”.

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Business book reviews from the archives of The Money Show:

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• How to get a tax refund from Sars

• How to get a nice, fat tax refund from Sars (a guide for business owners)

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Description of “Unfair Game” by Jonathan Ball Publishers:

In April 2019 Lord Ashcroft published the results of his year-long investigation into South Africa’s captive-bred lion industry.

Over 11 pages of a single edition of the Mail on Sunday he showed why this sickening trade, which involves appalling cruelty to the ‘King of the Savannah’ from birth to death, has become a stain on the country.

Unfair Game features the shocking results of a new inquiry Lord Ashcroft has carried out into South Africa’s lion business.

In the book, he shows how tourists are unwittingly being used to support the abuse of lions; he details how lions are being tranquilised and then hunted in enclosed spaces; he urges the British government to ban imports of captive-bred lion trophies, and he demonstrates why Asia’s insatiable appetite for lion bones has become a multi-million dollar business linked to criminality and corruption which now underpins South Africa's captive lion industry.

Listen to the interview in the audio below.

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