| Nighthawk117 said: SvennoJ, thank you for your answers to my questions, and thank you for your charts. I have one last question for you, and it is based on your previous answers.... Do you believe the world would be better off if China shut down its wet markets? |
No, they need better regulation and enforcement. The trade of problem animals sold there is already outlawed yet enforcement often fails. Moving the bad practices of some wet markets further underground will accomplish little. It's not just China either, many countries in the world sell live animals at wet markets. China does have the population to have the most chance of any transmission to take place.
The world would be better off without the bad practices at unregulated wet markets. Better enforcement is needed. A wet market is nothing more than a market where you can buy fresh meat and produce, any supermarket is a wet market, and China has been trying to convert the outdoor unregulated wet markets into more sanitary supermarkets. However they couldn't beat the prices of the outdoor wet markets.
Eating wild animals is not just reserved to Asia. Hunting is still allowed here, restaurants still serve wild animals, and the farmed meat industry still has many risks as well.
https://www.npr.org/2020/01/22/798644707/why-wet-markets-persisted-in-china-despite-disease-and-hygiene-concerns
https://theconversation.com/why-shutting-down-chinese-wet-markets-could-be-a-terrible-mistake-130625
A permanent shutdown of “wet markets” would affect patterns of food consumption in ways that are unknowable but potentially harmful to public health. It would deprive Chinese consumers of a food sector that accounts for 30-59% of their food supplies. Due to the large number of farmers, traders and consumers involved, the abolition of “wet markets” is also likely to lead to an explosion of an uncontrollable black market, as it did when such a ban was attempted in 2003, in response to SARS, as well as in 2013-14, in response to avian influenza H7N9.
This would involve enormously greater risk to public and global health than the legal and regulated live animal markets in China today. And live poultry and animal markets have long served as a crucial “early warning” site for viral surveillance, including in the United States.
What “wet markets” in China require is more scientific and evidence-based regulation, rather than being abolished and driven underground.
