Plan to Stop Rhino Poaching by Growing Horns in a Lab
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
It's similar to the jewelry use of diamonds. You can create artificial diamonds in the laboratory, they are cheaper and they are used a lot in industrial applications (maybe they are better because you can control the impurities?). But for jewelry the people wants the real diamonds because they apparently have some kind of magic.
This might be harder for authorities to identify real horn products, but it'll also make it harder for consumers.
Hopefully the authorities don't decide to solve the former problem with some sort of certification that can also be used to solve the latter.
It's essentially just keratin, which can be reclaimed from hair and nail clippings.
Most people don't buy entire horns, as the price is really high ($50k-100k/kg according to google).
Keratin powder, or keratin pressed into chunks, would probably fool most people, and there's effectively no way for consumers to verify authenticity.
So, fake rhino horn is easier than fake drugs, fake gemstones, fake currency etc.