CAGED, BOUND AND A FERTILE HAVEN FOR A SARS II

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CAGED, BOUND AND A FERTILE HAVEN FOR A SARS II

 

11:00 - 15 May 2003

Cruel Far Eastern animal markets trading in the flesh of exotic species,

are an infection timebomb ready to release a deadly super-Sars bug on

the world, experts warned last night. While Asia still reels from the

devastating flu-like epidemic, a leading charity says conditions are

ripe for a fresh disease to sweep across the region.

 

And Bristol's Chinese twin, the city of Guangzhou, is at the centre of

the latest alarming health scare.

 

Yesterday campaigners revealed that market workers there are still

plying their sick trade in wild and domestic animals - even though the

practice is banned by the government.

 

Officials acted amid fears the barbaric trading posts sparked the

quickfire spread of Sars. Despite the likely origins of the bug, the

taste for exotic creatures which end up as delicacies on restaurants

menus, has not been dulled.

 

Campaigners now fear markets like Guangzhou's - overloaded with

endangered wild animals kept in squalor and filth - are hotbeds of

disease.

 

Although hunting, sales and consumption of exotic animals is outlawed,

Guangzhou traders were yesterday openly flouting the regulations.

 

Experts fear the markets are an ideal breeding ground for new strains of

Sars and other virulent bugs able to cross from animals to humans.

 

Wild game sprung from traps are slung in cages with open wounds allowed

to fester, untreated. Many die in pain, but their corpses are simply

left to rot.

 

Earlier this week, investigators from the Animals Asia Foundation(AAF) -

which campaigns for the release of captive animals - visited the

notorious Hua Nam Wild Animal Market in Guangzhou, the capital of

Guangdong province.

 

The province in southern China, is thought to be the source of the

highly-infectious outbreak of the flu-like Sars disease, which has

killed hundreds of people across Asia, and spread worldwide.

 

The AAF team was appalled when they were faced with an " animal stew " of

wild, endangered and domestic species, cramped together in cages and

crates, caked in blood or missing limbs altogether after they were

snapped in traps.

 

AAF Veterinary Director, Dr Gail Cochrane said the wild animal markets

were health hazards which could incubate a new and deadly strain of

Sars. She said: " Even if the Sars virus did not evolve from animals in

the markets, the conditions present an ideal environment in which other

unknown or new viruses may incubate and emerge.

 

" The only way to minimise the threat of new viruses being transmitted is

to close the markets down. "

 

The pathetic menagerie witnessed by AAF included masked palm civet - a

wild cat, bigger than its domestic cousin - badgers, barking deer, wild

boars, hedgehogs, foxes and squirrels.

 

Also on sale were bamboo rats, snakes, endangered leopard cats and dogs,

cats, rabbits and gerbils. Turtles and anteaters are other favourite

treats on the dinner table. Dave Neale, AAF UK director based in Looe,

Cornwall, said the markets provide the perfect environment for germs and

infection.

 

A public security official in Shenzhen, in the southern province of

Guangdong, said last night: " In Shenzhen, we raided at least a few

hundred restaurants, kitchens and markets and arrested traders there. "

 

If convicted, traders of protected species face a 15-year jail term.

 

But despite the mass clampdown, AAF said yesterday that the markets were

still trading. AAF is now calling for an immediate enforcement of a ban

on animal markets.

 

 

 

--

Dave Neale

Animals Asia Foundation

 

Find out more about the historic China Bear Rescue by visiting the

Animals Asia Foundation website at http://www.animalsasia.org