To be so angry at the Chinese government

[HildegardeCrowe]

Because they didn’t shut the wet markets down permanently after SARS so another pandemic was inevitable. The rest of the world is now putting pressure on China to end it’s wildlife trade but this won’t be easy. Most of the world is in lockdown because of this trade and it’s so depressing to think history will repeat itself if China doesn’t get its act together.

The more I learn about how the Chinese abuse wild animals the angrier I get - the latest thing I read about is how they make the lives of bears a misery by extracting their bile.

Surely this is a PR disaster for China?

Yes but there are protocols and procedures. What is the procedure for selling bats?

It’s not just about commercial environments either though. Coronaviruses could come from anywhere animals and humans intermingle.

I’m puzzled by that last idea mango. I thought the wet markets were supposed to be out in the backwater rural areas and that’s why there’s issues policing them? My general expectation is that poor people eat whatever they can find. I gather you know more about China, but is your experience drawn from its big cities perhaps?

If this happened in a poor Chinese village eating local animals, it would never have spread like this. Poor villagers do not tend to travel very far.

Wuhan is a huge city and transport hub, the only people that eat wild animals in cities are wealthy Chinese. Who are very mobile as well.

Wet markets themselves are not the problem (I used to do my shopping in one). Live animal markets are more problematic, but those will likely be disappearing (they were already gone in the first-tier city I lived in). But wild animal markets are especially problematic. A wild animal vender doesn’t specialise like a chicken/pork/lamb vender would in a wet market.

They specialise in exotic animals, and will have cages of animals stacked upon each other. Disease will be rife and can easily jump species, to humans as well.

@ThrowingGoodAfterBad
Wet markets are found all over China in cities and rural areas. I live in a second tier city, but have travelled a lot within China including Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Xinjiang province. Some markets have low standards of hygiene eg lack of refrigeration, but the meat being sold is pork, chicken etc.
As Mango has said exotic species are eaten by wealthy chinese. This is not a poverty issue.
Based on what I have experienced china is an incredibly efficient country and policing markets to ensure regulations re sale of wild animals for consumption, are complied with would be straightforward.

This disease was in large part transmitted by business or wealthy people who travelled a lot. Look at all those sky related chains. People who hopped between countries.
Or big international events like football games.

Food for thought there.

How many times must you be told that Chinese by and large do not eat wild animals

It is a minority habit by a wealthy set of Chinese

You have just contradicted yourself

Either the Chinese rich or poor do not eat wild animals or they do.

If only a minority consume wild animals then the Chinese do eat wild animal

As I said above this isn’t about what animals people find acceptable but more about the rearing and hygiene processes surrounding the animals life and eventual slaughter

As I said before these people are literally serving shit and dirt to their customers.
And playing Russian roulette with their own and everyone else’s lives.

That is without the horrific cruelty that they seem to not understand.

I haven't read the whole thread but lived and travelled in China for many years. Wet markets are just food markets, much as they are in many many other countries. It's a place to buy fresh fish, meat, veg, fruit, sometimes houseplants. All in separate parts. Occasionally, you get some guy selling songbirds (for pets) or sth. On the east coast certainly, these people would be moved on by the police sharpish. Perhaps not in more rural areas. There's still huge disparity between city and country in terms of education/wealth/opportunity. Some animals for eating (fish, chicken) are sold live or slaughtered on demand, so that they are fresh and the idea is you buy and cook that day. In my experience, they were clean places, if nothing like a supermarket obviously! In the city, I much preferred to get fresh food from the wet market than the stuff in the supermarket, which was bad. Chinese laws on animal rights aren't anywhere near as stringent as ours but things like the bear-bile trade are illegal. Honestly, the way chickens/pigs/cows are often treated in the US and even Europe is cruel too. I think that's all a separate issue to the food hygiene/contamination issue, though related I'm sure. I guess I'm not defending every practice - clearly some action is needed. But don't call to deprive people of access to fresh food, that would be ridiculous. I'm also uncomfortable with some of the uninformed rumour here which is actually bordering on racist (they eat bats! Etc). Well, regional cuisine does sometimes involve 'speciality' meats occasionally or at special times of the year. FYI dog tastes pretty okay with the right spicing, it's at least as good as goat. If the meat is farmed, I don't see what difference the species makes. Pigs are as intelligent as dogs (but also tastier, unluckily for them!)

@Oliversmumsarmy

Look up the meaning of by and large and minority before you accuse pps of contradicting themselves.

They said that most people didn't eat, which means that a minority does. And that minority are wealthy people.

It means that it's not a widespread problem. And not simply an issue of banning wet meat markets.

It’s not just about commercial environments either though. Coronaviruses could come from anywhere animals and humans intermingle

But raising livestock is a controlled environment with strict protocol and regulations that we continually update. If there’s a problem, we can track that animal to the source.

You can’t track wild animals the same way. There will be some farm raised “wild animals” but wild caught will be mixed in, and since there are no health checks or monitoring, you cannot track these animals to any known source.

I knew it was spread here via the aeroplanes, tourists and the wealthy and now poorer people are getting the blame and taking the hit of lockdowns and self isolation. Why am I not surprised to hear it’s the same in China.

This disease was in large part transmitted by business or wealthy people who travelled a lot. Look at all those sky related chains.

Important point there Lweji. Cheltenham was not cancelled for commercial reasons. The Premier League made the decision very suddenly after European clubs were already playing behind closed doors and some footballers tested positive. None of us know exactly what happened in the market but what we do know is that economic pressures not to take action sooner were very strong.

Incidentally the ski resort of Ischgl has also been accused of covering up the number of transmissions. Apparently because they have done so much contact tracing, Norway and Germany both know a lot of their cases originated there.

dog tastes pretty okay with the right spicing

Doesn’t it bother you that dog was someone’s much loved pet that had been stolen to feed to you.

Doesn’t it bother you that dog was someone’s much loved pet that had been stolen to feed to you.

Doubt that it was.

Never tried dog or want to.

But I'm yet to eat meat I don't like.
I have eaten camel, supposedly, but with the right type of spices all meat tastes the same for me.

If the dogs are viewed and raised as food animals then they are not going to be someone’s beloved pet any more than Buttercup and Daisy the cow are. It’s the whipping up of this anti-foreigner hate that disturbs me. Convenient for Johnson - or Cummings, while his frontman is recovering - now that he can’t blame the EU any more, but we’ve already seen repercussions from that and where is this new lot going to end?

The Germans were people to, we discovered that in wartime. And are, of course. I shouldn’t have to say that.

What I should have said is that even the French are people too, frogs legs and snails or no. From an English person who likes elderberries and definitely is not a hamster.

Doubt that it was. Never tried dog or want to

Depends on where they ate the dog. If in South Korea, it was likely a farm-raised dog. If in China, who knows? I know of someone who found their stolen dog on a blocked dog meat truck off a highway (these are large-scale rescues done by Chinese animal rights activists).

There are people who steal large pet dogs to sell off in the dog meat trade. You can see CCTV footage of how it’s done. It’s horrific.

They get them however they can.

If the dogs are viewed and raised as food animals then they are not going to be someone’s beloved pet any more than Buttercup and Daisy the cow are

But they are not.

You only have to look at the cages to see some dogs are still wearing collars or little coats. Do you think that those dogs were raised for food or were someone’s pet that was stolen.

Well said throwingoodafterbad
Of course we French are human! (And we have the Holy Grail)

@PlanDeRaccordement Sorry are you trying to claim the myth of irish slavery is all some wiki hoax and not a well researched and recorded Far Right conspiracy Theory to try and discredit arguments about US slavery?

And it was 40,000 that went into indentured servitude (along with british people) not 400,0000 or whatever.

Try the wars of three kingdoms, also known as the british civil war. You think Irish Protestants just sprang from the ground? in future don't just guess stuff and hope its right.

Tell these lots why they're wrong-

Competing Narratives: White Slavery, Servitude and the Irish in Late-Eighteenth-Century America, M Powell, 2019-
link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-25984-6_5

www.nytimes.com/2017/03/17/us/irish-slaves-myth.html

*'It has shown up on Irish trivia Facebook pages, in Scientific American magazine, and on white nationalist message boards: the little-known story of the Irish slaves who built America, who are sometimes said to have outnumbered and been treated worse than slaves from Africa.

But its not true.'*

psmag.com/social-justice/the-irish-were-not-slaves-
No, the Irish Were Not Slaves To, Liam Hogan

I think you should also be angry at the fashion houses that used an undocumented badly paid and poorly housed Chinese migrant labour force just so the public could enjoy posh fashion brands that were affordable and yet, somehow miraculously ‘made in italy’.

It’s also worth noting that there is a generation gap wrt dogs. Before the 80s/90s, dogs were seen as working animals and, to a lesser degree, as food. Dog ownership as in the West would have been seen as bourgeois. But now only elderly really have that view.

It took some time for that view to catch up legally though, as it’s only just been announced that they have recategorised dogs as pets instead of livestock (maybe leapfrogging South Korea?!)

“It’s not just about commercial environments either though. Coronaviruses could come from anywhere animals and humans intermingle.”
Yes. MERS is a recent Coronavirus that humans get from domesticated camels. Having domesticated animals raised commercially with “protocols and procedures” is no protection against a Coronavirus emerging.
www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/middle-east-respiratory-syndrome-coronavirus-(mers-cov)

Plan I didn’t even think you had fridges yet...

“are you trying to claim the myth of irish slavery is all some wiki hoax and not a well researched and recorded Far Right conspiracy Theory to try and discredit arguments about US slavery?”

No to both. It is neither a hoax nor a far right conspiracy theory.

These are all valid points of investigation for animal and human rights and economic issues - we have yet to see the full economic repercussions of this, we need to wait and watch. But nothing to do with Coronavirus.

You only have to look at the cages to see some dogs are still wearing collars or little coats. Do you think that those dogs were raised for food or were someone’s pet that was stolen.

Don't believe every heart-wrenching video you see on FB. I guess I don't see the difference really between an animal which happens to be farmed, free, or a domestic pet. They all deserve to be treated with kindness and respect. I'm 100% sure that the dog meat I ate in southern China, somewhat under duress (social situation where it would have been massively rude not to try) was farmed meat. Probably had a terrible life which obviously, I don't like the thought of one bit. But probably not worse that a Danish pig or a French goose, or most British chickens.

Tbf, I am definitely a Cat Person though. And it was about 15 years ago now, so I can't take it back.