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March 15, 2021 10:40 pm
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Byy0q7uIx1w/who-points-to-wildlife-farms-in-southwest-china-as-likely-source-of-pandemic
WHO Points To Wildlife Farms In Southwest China As Likely Source of Pandemic
Thelasko shares a report from NPR: A member of the World Health Organization investigative team says wildlife farms in southern China are the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic. China shut down those wildlife farms in February 2020, says Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist with EcoHealth Alliance and part of the WHO delegation that travelled to China earlier this year. During that trip, Daszak says, the WHO team found new evidence that these wildlife farms were supplying vendors at the Huanan market in Wuhan with animals. Daszak told NPR that the government response was a strong signal that the Chinese government thought those farms were the most probable pathway for a coronavirus in bats southern China to reach humans in Wuhan. Those wildlife farms, including ones in the Yunnan region, are a part of a unique project that the Chinese government has been promoting for 20 years now. "They take exotic animals, like civets, porcupines, pangolins, raccoon dogs and bamboo rats, and they breed them in captivity," says Daszak. The agency is expected to release the team's investigative findings in the next two weeks. In the meantime, Daszak gave NPR a highlight of what they figured out. "China promoted the farming of wildlife as a way to alleviate rural populations out of poverty," Daszak says. The farms helped the government meet ambitious goals of closing the rural-urban divide, as NPR reported last year. "It was very successful," Daszak says. "In 2016, they had 14 million people employed in wildlife farms, and it was a $70 billion industry." Then on February 24, 2020, right when the outbreak in Wuhan was winding down, the Chinese government "put out a declaration saying that they were going to stop the farming of wildlife for food," says Daszak. The farms were then shut down. "They sent out instructions to the farmers about how to safely dispose of the animals -- to bury, kill or burn them -- in a way that didn't spread disease." Daszak thinks the government did this because these farms could be where the coronavirus jumped from a bat into another animal and then into people. During WHO's mission to China, NPR reports that "Daszak said the team found new evidence that these farms were supplying vendors at the Huanan Seafood Market in Wuhan, where an early outbreak of COVID occurred."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Original Link: http://rss.slashdot.org/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~3/Byy0q7uIx1w/who-points-to-wildlife-farms-in-southwest-china-as-likely-source-of-pandemic
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