New York Times 1/7/04: SARS Scare in China: Slaughter of the Animals

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http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/07/health/07SARS.html

January 7, 2004

 

The SARS Scare in China: Slaughter of the Animals

By JIM YARDLEY

 

European Pressphoto Agency

Wearing protective clothing yesterday, health workers in Guangzhou,

China, started drowning civet cats, which have been linked to

outbreaks of SARS, in a chemical solution before the animals were

burned.

 

Doug Kanter/Polaris, for The New York Times

Racoon dogs are being killed along with civet cats and hog badgers to

combat SARS.

 

GUANGZHOU, China, Jan. 6 - The Xinyuan market reeks of animal waste

and death. Trucks arrive daily with animals jammed into cages - cats,

dogs, pigeons, boars, ostriches, even rats. The people who work in

the market live in cages, too. They sleep above their shops, in tiny

lofts with bars for walls.

 

When they awoke on Tuesday they ran squarely into the local

government's new war against SARS. Animal control officers in masks

and smocks confiscated 148 animals, including civet cats, which some

scientists believe are SARS carriers. The animals, relatives of the

mongoose that would have ended up as a stew on local menus, earned no

reprieve.

 

" All of them will be killed today, " said Lian Junhang, a local

forestry bureau official overseeing the roundup at Xinyuan.

 

The resolve of officials here in Guangdong Province to slaughter an

estimated 10,000 civets and other animals as a preventive measure

against SARS was on vivid display Tuesday. Even as international

health officials urged caution, Chinese news media reported that

local health workers in protective suits and goggles were plunging

caged civets into pools of water and drowning them.

 

The extermination campaign, expected to be finished by Saturday, came

as state media announced that the 32-year-old SARS patient here whose

case rekindled fears of another outbreak will be released from the

hospital on Thursday. He has recovered, though experts still do not

know how he contracted the virus.

 

Guangdong officials decided Monday to kill the civets hours after

Chinese researchers announced that the local SARS patient had a new

strain of SARS similar to one found in the ferretlike animal. But

here at Xinyuan, the largest bird and animal market in this

provincial capital, people refuse to believe that civets can spread

SARS, just as few believe that the government can totally prevent

people here from eating them.

 

" It's going to continue, " predicted Zhou Guanghong, who raises civets

at a farm and sells them at Xinyuan. " People will still eat them. "

 

His fellow sellers, playing cards on a day with no customers, shared

his disgust with the government. " We're eating and living beside

civets, and all of us are in good health, " said a man who identified

himself only as Mr. Tang.

 

Nor were the animal sellers alone in their skepticism. On Monday

night, experts from the World Health Organization cautioned that more

scientific research was needed to definitively prove that SARS had

spread to humans from civets. The health group, which has long called

for strict regulation of wild game markets, nonetheless warned that

Guangdong should fully assess all risks to avoid infecting the people

carrying out the slaughter.

 

But Guangdong officials, perhaps motivated by the harsh criticism

they received for their botched handling of the initial outbreak last

year, seemed determined to act aggressively. Officials reportedly

even set up roadblocks on highways to catch anyone trying to smuggle

civets out of the province.

 

" Guangdong is entering an extraordinary period and extraordinary

measures are called for, " Feng Liuxiang, deputy director of the

provincial health bureau, told The Guangzhou Daily.

 

Mr. Lian, the forestry official at the Xinyuan market, said three

animals - not only civets but two lesser-known animals that Chinese

health officials have linked to SARS, raccoon dogs and hog badgers -

had been singled out for extermination. All three were confiscated

from the market on Tuesday.

 

National health officials have announced plans to further regulate

wild game markets and register people who work in them. But a

previous ban on selling civets in Guangdong, imposed last year after

the SARS outbreak, was quietly removed in late summer under pressure

from dealers after the virus was no longer deemed a threat.

 

The effort to better regulate workers was apparently under way at the

market, though limitations were evident. Local medical workers took

blood samples while the workers filled out questionnaires about which

animals they handle and whether they had suffered from SARS symptoms.

 

One man, Li Zheng, 27, stood holding his arm. " This is the fourth

time I've given blood as part of a test around here, " he said.

 

Mr. Li said that at the height of the SARS epidemic as many as 80

percent of the workers gave blood samples, but that most had dropped

out. He said he kept doing it not because he fears SARS but because

" it's a free medical checkup. "

 

Workers like Mr. Li repeatedly point out that no one in the Xinyuan

market, not even those bitten by civets, has ever gotten SARS. But

the market would seem to make an ideal breeding ground for any number

of diseases.

 

One employee estimated that more than 1,000 people live and work at

Xinyuan, and the proximity between people and animals is very close.

At night, families crowd into lofts enclosed by metal bars as animals

sleep, eat and defecate in cages below. On Tuesday, a young mother

nursed her infant in a plastic chair not far from animal cages.lers ran on concrete littered with animal entrails, bird

droppings and even dead chickens and rabbits.

 

The one visible effort at hygiene came at the end of the day when two

men in smocks passed through the market, spraying disinfectant.

 

The conditions endured by the animals at Xinyuan and other markets

have long been condemned as barbaric by animal rights activists. On

Tuesday, a large truck delivered a shipment of dogs from Henan

Province that will eventually be eaten. Dealers had jammed as many as

three dogs, some large, into cages roughly one foot by three feet.

Many of the cats that also would be sold for meat were pressed so

tightly into cages that they seemed indistinguishable from one

another.

 

Winter is considered the peak season for civet sales. The price of

civet rose during the 1990's as more wealth poured into Guangdong,

and dealers say they can make a nice profit on the animals. In all,

dealers selling civets to restaurants might earn more than $200 a

month, far more than they could from farming.

 

But they say SARS has devastated the civet market and also badly

damaged sales for wild food. " I've got to go back to farming again, "

said Mr. Tang, the man playing cards. " There is no more business

anymore. "

 

The large amounts of money involved - one estimate valued the wild

game market in China at $100 million annually - leads many experts to

worry that an unregulated black market could emerge. The difficulties

for Guangzhou in enforcing its ban are obvious: many civets are

farmed in neighboring provinces with no such restrictions.

 

Meanwhile, dealers at Xinyuan believe the government has simply gone

too far. " Are you still eating beef? " asked Xiong Xianming, a dealer.

" You're an American and you've got mad cow disease in America? Does

this mean you're going to kill every cow in America? "

 

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

 

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