Posted on 08/01/2003 5:40:39 AM PDT by JesseHousman
Aids, the Ebola Virus, monkey-pox, and SARS are all diseases that probably started in wild animals and switched to humans.
It now appears likely that the recent outbreak of SARS got its start from the close contact between Chinese animal merchants and their wares.
The people of Guangdong Profince in southern China are famous for eating "everything with four legs except a table, everything that flies except an airplane, and everything that swims except a submarine," and support a brisk trade in cats, snakes, bats, dogs, civet cats, pangolins, and anything else hunters can get their hands on.
People like the taste, but also claim a daily dose of snake's blood or powdered pangolin scales can cure disease.
Another reason for the popularity of bush meat is its price. South China is full of wheeler-dealers who like to flaunt their wealth by eating tiger penis or filleted cobra.
The Xinyuan market in Canton is the perfect place to get diseases from animals. The floor is littered with dead cats, birds, fish, frogs, and rats, and the place stinks of blood and feces. Animals of every description are crammed into tiny cages, where they gnaw at and defecate on each other. People in the trade are always around animals, and get up to their elbows in blood when they butcher them.
"Patient aero" in the SARS outbreak is thought to have been a Canton animal handler, and Chinese scientists report that up to 50 percent of the people who work with wild animals in Canton have antibodies to the SARS corona-virus.
The authorities have outlawed the animal trade, but enforce the ban only half-heartedly. Western reporters have had no trouble finding the usual assortment of animals for sale in the usual filthy conditions. The animal handlers say the link to SARS is a myth. As one explains:
"We are not afraid of any disease in our market. Chinese people have been eating wild animals for thousands of yers. We eat and sleep among our animals, and not a single one of us has ever caught SARS, and neither have any of our friends or relatives. In any case, he adds, "I think are jobs are more important than SARS."
The World Health Organization reports that if the trade in animals continues, there could well be another outbreak this fall or winter, when the weather is more favorable for transmission
In order not to infringe on KFC's business the Chinese plan to call their first endeavor KFR, or Kentucky Fried Rat.
Same product, different name.
The deaths from eating jellyfish in Japan are astrononical.
Bet that's supposed to be patient zero.
Yummy! Tastes like chicken.
Typo
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