Wildlife security

China and Vietnam finally ban wildlife trade due to coronavirus

If there can be a bright side to the coronavirus pandemic, which started in a “wet market” in Wuhan that sold live animals in deplorable conditions, it has finally spurred China and Vietnam to ban consumption of wild animals.

The two countries have been behind the skyrocketing death rates for endangered animals like the rhinoceros, elephant and the heavily trafficked pangolin, which have been killed for food and homeopathic “medicinal” cures in the countries. But this trade and the wet markets have been behind not just the recent outbreak, but the SARS explosion in 2002 (which is believed to have emanated from a small mammal called a civet), the swine flu and others.

In January, China imposed a ban on all farming and consumption of “terrestrial wildlife of important ecological, scientific and social value,” which is expected to be signed into law later this year.