WHO calls for BAN on the sale of live animals in food markets to stem Covid
- The WHO has called for a ban on the sale of live animals at food markets
- Comes after joint WHO-China investigation concluded that a market selling both live and dead animals was the most likely source of the Covid pandemic
- WHO had previously said markets should remain open, but with improvements
The World Health Organization has called for a ban on the sale of live animals in food markets to help protect against future pandemics.
It comes after a joint WHO-Chinese study into the origins of Covid published last month said that markets selling both live and dead animals were a likely source of the current pandemic.
The WHO had previously recommended that so-called ‘wet markets’ remain open to secure food supplies and jobs, but that conditions should be improved.
The WHO has called for a ban on food markets selling both live and dead animals in order to prevent the spread of disease, including Covid
‘Animals, particularly wild animals, are the source of more than 70 per cent of all emerging infectious diseases in humans, many of which are caused by novel viruses,’ it said in a statement.
‘Wild mammals, in particular, pose a risk for the emergence of new diseases.’
The WHO has focused on food markets as a likely source of the pandemic following a visit by its experts to Wuhan last year, where they all-but ruled out the possibility the disease escaped from a lab based on data given to them by the Chinese.
Instead, they concluded that an animal were Covid originated – most likely a bat – passed the disease on to an intermediary species which then infected people.
While that process may have taken place in China, the report’s authors refused to rule out the possibility that the infection took place overseas and the infected animal was then imported into the country.
The report has proved highly controversial, not least because it has been used by Beijing to push the narrative that Covid started elsewhere – at least partially absolving it of responsibility for a pandemic that has crippled the globe.
Washington has been particularly vocal in its criticisms, with members of the old Trump administration giving full-throated support to the lab leak theory.
The Biden administration has been less vocal in saying what they think the source of the virus was, but have pushed for further study into its origins.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Sunday accused China of not being transparent enough with information on Covid, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic, and called for a ‘more thorough’ investigation of the virus’s origins.
‘We need to get to the bottom of this,’ he said.
‘We need to do that precisely so we fully understand what happened, in order to have the best shot possible preventing it from happening again.’
Comes after WHO researchers zeroed in on food markets in the city of Wuhan (pictured) as a likely source of Covid, all-but dismissing the theory the virus came from a lab
More to follow…