Wet markets

[George.]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023...cientists-say/

Newly obtained genetic data from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) links the pandemic coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 to animals—specifically raccoon dogs—at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, where the earliest COVID-19 cases centered, a group of independent scientists told the World Health Organization this week.

Can someone explain to defenders of Chinese traditions that:

1) Raccoon dogs are not seafood (or raccoons, or dogs);

2) Eating wild species into extinction may extinguish us first.

[CWSmith]

No, I can't. The pangolin is at the top of my list of abuses by oriental medicine.

[sp_clark]

Hard to change old habits.

They've been eating 'wild' for 3,000+ years.

Problem being technology's allowed stuff to spread faster than it killed the host, why the entire world is now at risk to stuff that, before universally-available world-wide travel, wouldn't have affected nearly as many human beings.

Oh yeah, then there's the GoF research crowd getting their payrolls from far & wide, not always 'beneficial' interests.

[Keith Wilson]

There was a case a couple of years ago where some raccoon dogs (which I knew by the Japanese name tanuki) being raised for fur almost got loose in northern Minnesota. It would not have gone well at all; they'd probably have become seriously invasive, if cute. Fortunately they didn't; one got killed by a car, and they stopped it. Now illegal.

[George.]

Hard to change old habits.

They've been eating 'wild' for 3,000+ years.

They have also been dying of simple infections for lack of antibiotics for 3000+ years.

[TomF]

Traditions of eating "bushmeat" hasn't worked so well in terms of zoonotic diseases in Africa either. Ebola, AIDS, etc.

[Keith Wilson]

Can't really blame folks. If I were a poor Chinese farmer in the back county in previous times, I'd eat whatever I could get to stay alive.

[George.]

Come on. It's an urban wet market. I bet wildlife is way more expensive than factory chicken or pork in downtown Wuhan. This is urban well-off idiots practicing conspicuous consumption, just like with rhino horn.

[Andrew Craig-Bennett]

Come on. It's an urban wet market. I bet wildlife is way more expensive than factory chicken or pork in downtown Wuhan. This is urban well-off idiots practicing conspicuous consumption, just like with rhino horn.

That’s what I think.

[TomF]

I learned recently why European diseases were so devastating to inhabitants of the Americas, resulting in about a 90% fatality rate within 30 years of Columbus' landing. Throughout the Americas, there were very, very few domesticated species. None in North America, IIRC.

Most of the fatal diseases the Europeans brought were zoonotic - measles, smallpox, influenza, etc. - which merrily passed between wildlife, our livestock breeds and our Eurasian ancestors for thousands of years. Not so in the Americas, where people had no vast herds of sheep, cattle, swine, or domesticated poultry. So the bacteria and viruses had very little opportunity to spend enough time in hosts with enough ongoing proximity to humans to jump the species barrier to native peoples here.

The one great disease donation which the New World bequeathed to the Old ... was Syphilis. Which still is a far more serious matter for people whose ancestors originated elsewhere, than for people of native North American ethnicity.

[Paul Pless]

Most of the fatal diseases the Europeans brought were zoonotic - measles, smallpox, influenza, etc. - which merrily passed between wildlife, our livestock breeds and our Eurasian ancestors for thousands of years. Not so in the Americas, where people had no vast herds of sheep, cattle, swine, or domesticated poultry. So the bacteria and viruses had very little opportunity to spend enough time in hosts with enough ongoing proximity to humans to jump the species barrier to native peoples here.

not just domesticated livestock herds, but starting with cro magnon man, the early europeans actually brought their livestock into their caves and other dwellings - in effect sleeping with their livestock <insert your favourite albeit tired irish, welsh, scottish sheap joke here>

[Nicholas Carey]

I read about this last night — The Atlantic Monthly ran a big piece on it. Lot of details (and links.

It's front and center, above the fold on their web site this morning:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...b-leak/673390/

[CWSmith]

You can object to the killing of endangered species (and I certainly do) and you can object to unhygienic conditions (everyone should), but otherwise how is it different from selling deer or wild turkey? My cousins certainly eat that, although they kill their own.

[Jim Bow]

Its my understanding that "raccoon dogs" are raised on farms for meat and fur. they are a domesticated species.

[George.]

You can object to the killing of endangered species (and I certainly do) and you can object to unhygienic conditions (everyone should), but otherwise how is it different from selling deer or wild turkey?

Because they are selling endangered species under unhygienic conditions?