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Bushmeat could cause the next pandemic - here’s why it's a threat and what’s being done to stop it
May 26, 2020
An evolutionary biologist has warned of the consequences of eating bushmeat, due to the risk of catching zoonotic diseases, infectious diseases that originate in animals. Some of the world's most deadly diseases, such as HIV, SARs, MERs, Ebola all emerged from other species, including the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. The greater exposure we have to zoonotic diseases, the most likely another epidemic or pandemic outbreak becomes.
Using the tip of my boot, I pushed the charred and blackened hand back into the fire and watched as vivid flames engulfed the limb, along with the smouldering forms of other primates, ungulates , bats, pangolins and a whole host of other species of endangered, legally protected and potentially deadly wildlife. I was present at one of the very first large-scale confiscations of bushmeat in Liberia , West Africa, where the animal remains were being burned to prevent them from entering food markets both locally and further afield.
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As an academic who has worked with primate pathogens and the bushmeat trade through field and laboratory work, I know there is a very real risk of humans catching animal diseases from contaminated meat. So while I am grimly reassured efforts are at least being made to help the conservation of these species, I am nevertheless left fearing the very real implications of humans eating them.
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