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China bans consumption and trade of wild animals
- Onanymous 7y agoThat's great. But do they have any wild animals left in China?
- ketzu 7y agoChina has a population density only 4 times the density of the US and half the one of Germany. It has a vast amount of wildlife. Why wouldn't they have any wild animals left?
- fishmaster 7y agoBecause they're even endangering animals in other countries and continents, so why not their own as well?
- dntbnmpls 7y agoEveryone is endangering animals in other countries. And when it comes to preserving their own wild animals, china is much better at it than europe who wiped out pretty much all their major fauna. The US isn't much better since we pretty much wiped out most of our native wild life.
- pvaldes 7y agoChina came first in the extinction of marine mammals with Baiji. US is figthing hard in a close position for the second place, with Chinese help. There is not anymore "our" animals and "your" animals. Pangolin is not a Chinese animal, neither Totoba.
- fishmaster 7y agoThe chinese and their idiotic traditional 'medicine' are endangering so many animals that it's not even close. They're actively encouraging poaching.
- dntbnmpls 7y agoActually, their traditional medicine probably preserves those wild animals because the chinese need them. Whereas in the US, we simply exterminated most of the animals because they were considered a nuisance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bison_skull_pile_edit.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bison_skull_pile_edit.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_pigeon There are no more wolverines in the wolverine state. There are no california bears in california. And of course we almost wiped out the american bald eagle. If china wants to catch up to the US or Europe, they had to do a lot more exterminating.
- fishmaster 7y agoSure, if you want to call eradication by brutish poaching 'preserving' then go ahead. I call it what it is. Also, this whataboutism doesn't help anyone.
- thrower123 7y agoThere's also the fact that upwards of 80% of that popoulation is eastward of a line running roughly from Peking to Canton.
- RachelF 7y agoMany are trafficked from Africa. Rhinos are almost extinct thanks to Chinese demand for their horns. African Pangolins are now critically endangered thanks to Chinese demand.
- nobody0 7y agoWe still don't know where the source is, and who the 0th patient is.
- hajderr 7y agoBut we know other things...
- PhantomGremlin 7y agoYeah, we have no idea where the source is. But we do know that China is a country 9,596,961 square km in size. We also know that China's National Biosafety Laboratory, their only Level 4 microbiology lab, is located at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which is 278 meters away (as the crow flies) from the Huanan Seafood Market. Said market has previously been speculated to be the source. Is it simply coincidence that in a country of nearly 10 million square km the outbreak may have started less than 300 meters away from this laboratory? Fortunately the esteemed New York Times has assured me that this is a "Fringe Theory of Coronavirus Origins". https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronavirus-tom-cotton-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/17/business/media/coronaviru... Here are a few articles that speculate further about this "fringe theory": https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009669/Did-coronavirus-originate-Chinese-government-laboratory.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8009669/Did-coronav... https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-coronavirus-may-have-leaked-from-a-lab-2020-02-22 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/dont-buy-chinas-story-the-...
- yfzhou 7y agohttps://goo.gl/maps/9dzPVq8XBtChHRxJA https://goo.gl/maps/9dzPVq8XBtChHRxJA
- jbattle 7y agoYou got me curious and I did a little digging. It seems like there are two facilities and it's not clear to me which one actually houses the samples in question. This facility "Wuhan Jianghan Disease Prevention and Control Center" is actually very close to the market. There's no street view there - seems probable this is just a normal office (there are restaurants in the same building) https://www.google.com/maps/search/Wuhan+Jianghan+Disease+Prevention+and+Control+Center,+50+Machangjiao+Rd,+Xi+Bei+Hu,+Jianghan+District,+Wuhan,+Hubei,+China/@30.6064949,114.2642333,19.96z https://www.google.com/maps/search/Wuhan+Jianghan+Disease+Pr...
- ivanhoe 7y ago"prohibiting the illegal wildlife trade" This site is in bad need for a proofreader...
- cltsang 7y agoIf what you mean is those words are lengthy and repeated, that's actually how chinese officials talk and write.
- adrianN 7y agoI believe they mean that prohibiting something that is illegal is unnecessary.
- Joker_vD 7y agoOn the contrary, you prohibit exactly "unlawful <sort of action>", e.g. "unlawful consumption of narcotics". That means that what exactly constitutes unlawfulness of such acts is a part of a different law, and usually not even a law, but a by-law or a regulation. For example, look at the German penal code, title 184f, "Ausübung der verbotenen Prostitution" — it's literally "Practicing illegal prostitution", and it's worded that way because there is also legal one.
- yfzhou 7y agoIf you just say "prohibit trade of wild animals", that would imply China just outlawed all trade related to wild animals while the news is actually about a decision to absolutely enforce existing laws.
- kinleyd 7y ago/of a proofreader?
- gruez 7y ago"This site" as in ctvnews.ca? That fragment is quote from Chinese state media.
- vraivroo 7y ago
- qiqitori 7y agoNo more cannibalism, too bad.
- kinleyd 7y agoHeh heh, title is indeed badly worded.
- bilekas 7y agoIt can be banned, sure, but I don't see the superstitious side of the consumption being curtailed. When you have a market for rare 'natural wondercures' being sought out, it only takes one mutation in a virus to spread on from another mammal to humans, add to that China's population density. A recipe for disaster.
- drenginian 7y agoYou really think people in China haven’t been scared out of doing risky things like eating wild animals?
- michaelt 7y agobilekas is probably thinking of the trade in things like poached ivory, rhino and tiger parts, where being banned on paper has not eliminated the black market.
- jacquesm 7y agoA ban on paper facilitates a black market.
- ben_w 7y agoNo more so than expecting westerners to be scared out of all the dangerous things we do. Even to the extent that most of us don’t smoke or have lots of unprotected one night stands with strangers, there’s enough who do that they and their illnesses are still a major part of our health systems.
- fredgrott 7y agohmm does that mean they no longer eat politicians?
- biolurker1 7y agoNice but it won't solve Biosafety 4 labs from leaking viruses and then covering up the truth like chernobyl
- onceUponADime 7y agoTry to see the good side- after this, no more bio labs, cause politicians like that as much as they like militarys going rogue with nukes.
- someperson 7y agoI can't see how this can be successfully enforced without a massive education campaign and actual enforcement by authorities, including moving the so-called "wet markets" (which are outdoor butchers that are very important to the food supply chain in many areas of China) into modern indoor facilities for improved food safety. Older people in China (the so-called lost generation) are set in their ways: remember that in traditional Chinese medicine, the medicinal value of an animal is directly proportional to its rarity. This of course creates perverse incentives to kill the last living members of endangered animals already under threat from poachers. China has plenty of laws including a constitution that defends practicing free speech and religion, but in reality laws mean nothing if there's no enforcement.
- bitwize 7y agoTraditional Chinese medicine was on its way out, and China embracing science-based medicine -- until Chairman Mao introduced "barefoot doctors" as a cheap substitute for real doctors when the Chinese health care infrastructure found itself woefully understaffed.
- exhilaration 7y agoRelated article: As it races to treat patients infected with the new coronavirus, the Chinese government is seeing potential in a cocktail of antiviral drugs. It is also recommending the Peaceful Palace Bovine Pill, a traditional Chinese medicine made with the gallstone of cattle, buffalo horn, jasmine and pearl. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/world/asia/coronavirus-traditional-chinese-medicine.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/05/world/asia/coronavirus-tr...
- dmix 7y ago> The use of these ancient Chinese remedies dovetails with a push by Xi Jinping, China’s top leader, to harness them as a source of national pride. He has said that officials should place as much importance on traditional Chinese medicines as they do on Western medicines. This is actually scary to read, handing out placebos in the middle of an epidemic. China is going to continue being ground zero for these sorts of things (that and the developmentally-fringe parts of Africa). A couple of years ago (2013-2016) China had an H7N9 avian flu outbreak that infected 1,223 and had a 30-40% mortality rate (COVID-19 is around 2.1%), which didn't get much Western news coverage: >> It has been established that many of the human cases of H7N9 appear to have a link to live bird markets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H7N9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_A_virus_subtype_H7N9 Even the classic 1918 flu that killed 50 million originated in China: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanish-flu-1918-china-origins-pandemic-science-health/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/1/140123-spanis...
- 0xcafecafe 7y agoI hope it is enforced well. A lot of loss of wildlife (tigers, rhinos, etc) in the neighboring countries is attributed to the consumption for traditional Chinese medicine.
- stevespang 7y agoSo is this ban create a "diversion" for the PRC for all the rational suspicion that the virus really came from a bioweapons lab in Wuhan ? Does this ban comprehensively cover ALL wild animals, tigers, elephants, shark fins, rhinos, pangolins - - - all those animals that mostly the Chinese are driving to extinction with their "witch doctor" beliefs consuming body parts of animals gives them strength or health ?
- blackrock 7y agoThere is a lot of stupid and non-sense talk about how the coronavirus was created, because of Chinese people eating bats. There is no scientific evidence to support this! Instead, this exposes the deep-seated biases and prejudices, that Westerners (white people) have of Easterners, and specifically, the Chinese, in this case. It also didn’t help that the Trump Administration went on a negative media assault for the past 3 years to demonize the Chinese, so they are now an easy scapegoat for all troubles in the world. This really does not help the situation. Now, how about a different theory? Animals normally develop immunity to their environment, and from the viruses that exist in that area. This is the law of natural selection in play. Those that survive, go on and reproduce, and carry the antibodies to protect their offspring. Those that don’t, will die off, and their bodies will be eaten by vultures. I suspect that the coronavirus mutated and appeared, because of an animal from one part of the world, was shipped to another part of the world, where it didn’t have natural immunity to the diseases of that region. In this case, a bat carrying the virus. Maybe an animal from Africa, was transported to Asia, where it would have never traveled there by itself. That animal got sick, and triggered a mutation, which infected a human handling it, which mutated again, and infected another human, and now, we have an outbreak. The key to understanding this may be in how the MERS virus appeared. It’s believed to come from bats, which infected a camel, which infected a human. Do people in the Middle East eat camels? No, I don’t think so. So why should SARS and this COVID-19 virus be any different? Limiting the transport of live animals, to different areas of the world, should help minimize future virus outbreaks. But, humans have been transporting live animals all over the world, for hundreds or thousands of years, ever since boats were first invented. So I suspect, that it is only a matter of time before another novel coronavirus appears. And global warming may also be playing a factor too, in triggering viruses and diseases in nature, that had previously been dormant. This is HN. Most people here are scientifically and technically educated. Do your part. Analyze the situation scientifically. Change the narrative. Otherwise, we risk devolving into our deep seated fears and prejudices. We lose our humanity in the process.
- cycrutchfield 7y agoFunny how you chose MERS as your example and not SARS. Intentionally trying to be disingenuous?
- magwa101 7y agoJFC, finally. Eating domestic animals is bad enough, wild ones is a complete non starter.
- honestoHeminway 7y agoAgain.. maybee its time to admit, that propaganda announcements out of china - are simply not worth the time and effort. They announce to go green, and produce a potemkin village of effort. They announce to ban trade of wild animals (2012/ 2017) and it just never is fully implemented or enforced. China is actually even more chaotic then africa, because that nice facade of that utopian well working, strong government many int he west secretly year for, distracts from the actual chaos and routined subversion on the ground.
- Vysero 7y agoImho, anything short of: 1) A permanent ban on the sale of live animals at public markets. 2) A strict nationwide enforcement of food safety regulations. 3) A government backed re-education campaign against the use of traditional Chinese medicine. and their efforts will again fail.
- nate_meurer 7y agoAside from the disease risk, remember that the Chinese appetite for wild animals as "traditional medicine" is contributing to the disappearance of entire species. Notable and well-publicized examples include tigers and rhinos, but there are many others. Stupid shit like using rhinos horns and tiger genitals as aphrodisiacs are still widely held beliefs in parts of China. Xi Jinping's administration has actually been encouraging this nonsense, and in Fall of 2018 they proposed lifting restrictions on the trade and sale of endangered animal parts. This tragedy has been extensively reported for my whole life. As a little kid I remember being brought to tears by accounts of the cruelty of Chinese traditional medicine, and the appetite of east Asian countries for exotic animals in general. Documentation is plentiful. Just an example, this Nat Geo article came in near the top of my search results just now: https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/04/29/tigers-in-traditional-chinese-medicine-a-universal-apothecary/ https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2014/04/29/tigers-in-tra...
- nikofeyn 7y agoand it's not just china. many other asian countries, such as vietnam, consume illegal animal parts for traditional medicine and enable the trade of such things in china. couple all of that with socioeconomic struggles in africa that creates a willingness and incentive to supply, and you have a problem that won't disappear until the animals disappear. in half a century, poaching, human encroachment on habitats, and climate change will see many animals (rhinos, tigers, polar pears, certain orca populations, etc.) disappear. humans are not organized enough to stop this.
- baybal2 7y agoFunnily, China has stopped issuing hunting licenses some 20 years ago, but it was still legal to catch a wild animal without "hunting" it, and killing it on the spot. A great example of literal to the letter selective enforcement of law here.
- mstwntd_g 7y agoChina needs to go halal..