image by: Joseph Younis

HWN Suggests

Bird Flu Has Already Appeared in New York’s Animal Markets. What’s Next?

As bird flu spreads to every corner of the globe, so-called wet markets like these are worrying public health experts. They are the petri dishes in which the next pandemic virus might emerge, jumping from bird to bird, or to other animals held just a few feet away, until finally adapting to humans.

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 What we've got wrong about China's 'wet markets' and their link to COVID-19

It’s essential to remember that only a small proportion of Chinese people, many of them among the older generations, eat wild animals. Meanwhile, the use of wild animals for medicinal purposes – which draws most cultural criticism, especially from the West – is unlikely to be wiped out straight away by a simple blanket ban. Criminalizing the trade will force it where regulators cannot follow – and where unsafe practices are more likely to result in further deadly outbreaks.

Articles of Interest

A better classification of wet markets is key to safeguarding human health and biodiversity

Wet markets have been implicated in multiple zoonotic outbreaks, including COVID-19. They are also a conduit for legal and illegal trade in wildlife, which threatens thousands of species. Yet wet markets supply food to millions of people around the world, and differ drastically in their physical composition, the goods they sell, and the subsequent risks they pose. As such, policy makers need to know how to target their actions to efficiently safeguard human health and biodiversity without depriving people of ready access to food.

Filthy 'Wet Markets' Are Still Selling Scared Animals and Rotting Flesh Despite Mounting COVID-19 Death Toll

It’s bloody, filthy environments like these in which zoonotic diseases originate.