If it looks like a horn and has the properties of horn, it's rhino horn, right?

This is what a San Francisco start-up, Pembeint, wants those who buy rhino horn to believe.Pembient wants to flood the market with genetically modified rhino horn in a bid to replace the illegal wildlife trade, a $20-billion (about R284-billion) black market.The company hopes that its horn will be taken up the same way that fake animal fur has, but the move is being met with strong resistance from environmental groups.Suzanne Boswell Rudham, spokesman of the South African conservation group Saving the Survivors, slammed the idea."What people think is the holy grail is the poisoned chalice in the fight to save rhinos," she said. Instead of stopping the horn trade it would create a larger consumer base, she added."The connoisseurs, who want horns from real and wild rhinos, will definitely not go for this and will pay top dollar for the real thing. For them it's all about status and image."Boswell Rudham said the synthetic horn had nothing to do with conservation."The company will provide a product which they will make huge profit off."If they had noble reasons, as they claim, then the money they make should be spent on conservation."The idea that flooding a market with cheap rhino horn is like trying to argue that flooding a market with cheap drugs will get people to stop taking narcotics. It's ludicrous."Environmental Affairs Department spokesman Albi Modise said the chances were slim that the Asian markets would accept rhino horn made in a laboratory."People have tried to sell horns from water buffalo in these markets, which was not accepted," he said...