Is This What It Takes to End the Wildlife Trade? #Endwildlifetrade

As of 29th February 2019, COVID-2019 has stricken over 85,400 people in a matter of 2-3 months, resulting in the deaths of over 2,830. These numbers should be put into perspective against annual influenza, which according to the World Health Organisation (WHO) causes an estimated 3 to 5 million cases of severe illness, and 290,000 to 650,000 respiratory deaths worldwide.

However, a level of heightened concern has rippled across the world due to the novel nature of COVID-19, the ease with which the virus seems to spread and the many questions that still need to be answered regarding transmission, final mortality rates and the overall impact of the virus, globally – not just on human health but on the world economy.

A key issue that has been at the forefront of the outbreak and global discourse, is the role of the wild animal trade as a possible source of the virus.

In fact, the transmission of deadly viruses from the wild animal trade is not new (Table 1) and yet to date there has been little concerted effort to curb this trade, despite past warnings of virus outbreaks.¹ Rather, the legal and illegal wildlife trade has in the past decade reached unprecedented levels, such that wildlife crime is now considered one of the 4th most valued illicit activities behind drugs, weapons and human trafficking.

Table 1 Examples of Recent Human Infections Associated with the Animal Trade

As affluence has increased, all manner of wild animals are commonly found as key ingredients in luxury dishes and traditional medicines, especially in Asia, despite sound evidence of any benefit. According to recent commentary in the Lancet²: 

The obsession with meat and products from wild animals may originate from the philosophy of medicine food homology.³

Many Chinese people mistakenly extend the scope of the homology and simply think that one is made of the supplements they eat. For instance, kidney and penis of deer or tiger are believed to have aphrodisiac effect, and brain of fish or monkey are supposed to make people brighter.

Another false belief …. is that meat and products from wild animals have certain therapeutic effects. For example, Chinese pangolin meat is believed to help relieve rheumatism, its blood is believed to promote blood circulation and remove meridian obstruction, and its bile is believed to eliminate so-called liver fire and improve eyesight.

The pangolin has the unfortunate accolade of not only being the most trafficked mammal in the world, with more than a million animals estimated to have been poached between 2000 and 2016⁴ and all 8 species threatened with extinction– but importantly is under suspicion as a COVID-19 host. Although research is ongoing, viruses isolated from the pangolin have been found to be 99% similar to that of the current circulating virus⁵. 

Whether the pangolin is the source of COVID-19 has yet to be confirmed. A research paper is due shortly from scientists at the South China Agricultural University in Guangzhou. Nevertheless, coronaviruses are known to be widespread in multiple animal species including bats, reptiles, birds, monkeys and pigs and are known in cases to transfer to humans⁶ with relative ease.

The fairly recent SARs epidemic⁷ thought to be caused by a coronavirus found in the horseshoe bat and hosted in the masked palm civet⁸, is frequently cited and compared to the current COVID-19 outbreak, with some researchers calling the latter SARS-CoV-2. At this stage of the COVID-19 outbreak, SARS appears to have been a more deadly but less transmissible and easier to contain virus. The more pessimistic of us might then question – what if a virus emerged from the wild animal trade that is as deadly as SARS, Ebola or H5N1 and as transmissible as COVID-2019?