By Richard Farinato
About 75% of diseases affecting humans that have emerged in the last two decades are known to have come from animals. Human illness and deaths from malaria, Ebola, monkeypox, West Nile virus, and even plague have increased in recent years. The ease of international travel today creates the potential to spread contagious diseases across countries in a very short time.
In spite of that sobering information, and the fact that other zoonotic diseases have been with us for decades, large sectors of the world's population continue to engage in activities that could be likened to unsafe sex in the age of AIDS: eating wild animals that can expose the consumer to any number of known and unknown diseases and parasites. And if eating the animal doesn't do it, then maybe exposure to body fluids, feces or debris on the skin when the animal is handled or slaughtered will succeed in making the intrepid gourmet ill.
Right now, a world away in China, the government is destroying thousands of wild creatures—civet cats, raccoon dogs, and ferret badgers, all typically sold as food and all thought to be vectors of SARS—in the wake of SARS resurfacing in the Guangdong Province. Media reports say Chinese officials are drowning civet cats in antiseptic solution and then incinerating them. Their methods make us cringe—and make animal protection groups around the world call for humane handling and euthanasia methods instead.
There are also calls to eliminate the live wildlife markets entirely, as a way to avoid new risks to human health. How this will all be resolved remains unclear.
As with many other animal issues, live animal markets can be a complicated problem to address. Cultural traditions are involved, and those traditions can conflict with broader societal views. Most people don't realize that live animal markets exist in nearly every culture; the animals in them may be destined to be pets, food, religious objects, or medicine.
My colleague Michelle Jacmenovic has compiled a comprehensive look at Asian live animal markets, based on a great deal of research. I've personally seen much of what she describes: In Taipei, Taiwan, as I was walking down a narrow street with stall after stall of live animals for sale, I routinely saw animals kept in deplorable, over-crowded conditions. Fish flailing helplessly in dishpans and metal trays. Turtles and frogs crammed in wood or metal crates. Others animals were piled up in aquaria where the sheer number of creatures would make surfacing to breathe impossible. The most common turtle was our own native red eared slider, from quarter-sized hatchlings on up to 6 inch individuals.
In the United States, most people don't go to the store and carry home a mess of live frogs, or a turtle, or a raccoon, or some pigeons for dinner. There are, however, people who do just that in various cities around the nation.
An example: On the border between the District of Columbia and Maryland, in as urban a setting as you can imagine, I stood outside a tiny mom-and-pop Asian market on a hot summer day, looking at ducks, geese, chickens, pheasants, and pigeons in boxes and cages that were filthy and crowded. Neighbors had complained about the presence of the animals, and that the birds were being slaughtered outside the shop after purchase.
Patrons of this store could be taking risks equal to those of people in Southern China.
Attention Shoppers
The old Latin phrase, caveat emptor clearly applies to more than used cars or second-hand appliances. In the last year, monkeypox took a trip to the Midwest aboard Gambian pouched rats, available in pet stores for the seeker of novelty animals. It jumped to our native prairie dogs, who are trapped and distributed for sale in America. The government then jumped, and banned import and sale of African rodents and prairie dogs as pets.
In the last year, Mad Cow Disease also arrived in America, this time in the Pacific Northwest, turning some into instant vegetarians. Again, the government jumped into action to combat the potential disaster for animal and human health. And recently, the government banned the import of civet cats into the United States. Although these developments are steps in the right direction, it's unfortunate that it has taken the suffering of humans and animals to make them happen.
The scary question is: Who knows what will turn up next, and via what pathway? Literally, food to die for should not be on anyone's menu. In large part, that's why more and more environmental, wildlife, and animal protection groups are calling for a serious and precautionary approach to the routine traffic and commercialization in wild animals or wild animal products.
Destroying 10,000 civet cats will not end the transmission of SARS. Ending the marketing of wild animals as food is probably the only thing that will.
Regardless of cultural predilections, let's recall one of the basic tenets that our parents tried to drill into all us, and that the comedian Jonathan Winters had one of his characters make famous: "Don't touch that possum, Baby Elizabeth; you don't know where it's been."
Richard Farinato is The HSUS's Director of Captive Wildlife Programs and the Wildlife Advocacy Division.
