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> So, what’s the difference between a “wet market” and the sort of familiar farmer’s market 1) The wet market is full of live animals in close proximity and ve

> So, what’s the difference between a “wet market” and the sort of familiar farmer’s market 1) The wet market is full of live animals in close proximity and very unsanitary conditions. So pathogens are more likely to still be alive, and can jump between diverse hosts, not just to humans. 2) The wet market is full of non-domesticated, exotic animals which carry pathogens humans are not acquainted to.

derefr 7y ago
Re 1: you’re probably picturing your local butcher shop. Don’t. Picture a pier in a coastal town. The lobsters? Alive. The oysters? Alive. In close proximity? Certainly. Sitting right beside a bunch of gutted fish and processed chum? Yup. That’s a wet market. You can’t name one thing going on in Wuhan that doesn’t happen on such a pier. Even the general approach of “whatever we catch, we sell” is the same. And yet, nobody gets sick from that. Food poisoning in your sushi or your raw oysters, every time it’s been followed up, has turned out to be from the source (farming in bad conditions) or from transport (shipping hundreds of miles in non-refrigerated trucks), not from cross-contamination at a market. Thus my point: clearly, some markets keep generating diseases; but if they’re doing the same thing as the markets that don’t generate diseases, then it’s likely not wet markets as a process for distributing food that are the problem here. Because some of them—almost all of them, in fact—work just fine. (Analogy: are “restaurants” a vector for disease? Not in general, no. Specific ones, certainly. But not as a concept. Something additional has to be going on.) So, if you eliminate the process itself, what’s left? The inventory and its sourcing; the people and their own personal hygiene; and a few other things. In any case much less tasteful topics to argue about. Which is why people would prefer that this not be about those things, and instead be some endemic issue to meat markets.
- woah 7y ago
  I haven't read the article, but it seems much more likely that a virus be able to jump from a mammal to a human than a mollusk to a human
- tlb 7y ago
  The risk to human health from gutted mammals is much higher than from lobsters, because viruses are more often compatible between more closely related species. A reasonable restriction would be on wet markets for mammals, excepting a few where the safety properties are well known like cows.
- kleer001 7y ago
  > That’s a wet market. No it's not. You're off by two orders of magnitude of number of different and wild species. That's THE key. The variation and combinations of vicera and species. "...live wolf pups, golden cicadas, scorpions, bamboo rats, squirrels, foxes, civets, hedgehogs (probably porcupines), salamanders, turtles and crocodiles. In addition, it offered assorted parts of some animals, such as crocodile tail, belly, tongue and intestines...." from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/24/calls-for-global-ban-wild-animal-markets-amid-coronavirus-outbreak https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/24/calls-for-gl...
- philwelch 7y ago
  People do, sometimes, get sick from shellfish. Some ancient cultures reacted to this by creating a food taboo against shellfish (I believe Jews and Muslims do this). Other cultures have implemented monitoring for "red tide" conditions and restrict shellfish harvesting accordingly. As human beings, when we make a mistake that leads to diseases that kill people, we do what we can to avoid making that same mistake twice. I'm not sure why this is an objectionable or questionable notion.
- slavik81 7y ago
  It's not the same. Live ocean creatures are isolated from each other. They're stored in water-tight containers by necessity. By contrast, live land animals are stored in cages and often stacked on top of each other. Vox has a video explaining "Why new diseases keep appearing in China" [1]. They include footage of Chinese wet markets around the 2:00 mark. I think they make an excellent case for strictly regulating, or even outright banning wet markets. Long ago, Europe had the same problem. The cities were full of wet markets, and were basically the perfect conditions for creating new plagues. There's a nice CGP Grey video on this, "Americapox: The Missing Plague" [2]. [1]: https://youtu.be/TPpoJGYlW54 https://youtu.be/TPpoJGYlW54 [2]: https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk

derefr 7y ago

Re 1: you’re probably picturing your local butcher shop. Don’t. Picture a pier in a coastal town. The lobsters? Alive. The oysters? Alive. In close proximity? Certainly. Sitting right beside a bunch of gutted fish and processed chum? Yup. That’s a wet market. You can’t name one thing going on in Wuhan that doesn’t happen on such a pier. Even the general approach of “whatever we catch, we sell” is the same. And yet, nobody gets sick from that. Food poisoning in your sushi or your raw oysters, every time it’s been followed up, has turned out to be from the source (farming in bad conditions) or from transport (shipping hundreds of miles in non-refrigerated trucks), not from cross-contamination at a market. Thus my point: clearly, some markets keep generating diseases; but if they’re doing the same thing as the markets that don’t generate diseases, then it’s likely not wet markets as a process for distributing food that are the problem here. Because some of them—almost all of them, in fact—work just fine. (Analogy: are “restaurants” a vector for disease? Not in general, no. Specific ones, certainly. But not as a concept. Something additional has to be going on.) So, if you eliminate the process itself, what’s left? The inventory and its sourcing; the people and their own personal hygiene; and a few other things. In any case much less tasteful topics to argue about. Which is why people would prefer that this not be about those things, and instead be some endemic issue to meat markets.

woah 7y ago
I haven't read the article, but it seems much more likely that a virus be able to jump from a mammal to a human than a mollusk to a human
tlb 7y ago
The risk to human health from gutted mammals is much higher than from lobsters, because viruses are more often compatible between more closely related species. A reasonable restriction would be on wet markets for mammals, excepting a few where the safety properties are well known like cows.
kleer001 7y ago
> That’s a wet market. No it's not. You're off by two orders of magnitude of number of different and wild species. That's THE key. The variation and combinations of vicera and species. "...live wolf pups, golden cicadas, scorpions, bamboo rats, squirrels, foxes, civets, hedgehogs (probably porcupines), salamanders, turtles and crocodiles. In addition, it offered assorted parts of some animals, such as crocodile tail, belly, tongue and intestines...." from https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/24/calls-for-global-ban-wild-animal-markets-amid-coronavirus-outbreak https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/jan/24/calls-for-gl...
philwelch 7y ago
People do, sometimes, get sick from shellfish. Some ancient cultures reacted to this by creating a food taboo against shellfish (I believe Jews and Muslims do this). Other cultures have implemented monitoring for "red tide" conditions and restrict shellfish harvesting accordingly. As human beings, when we make a mistake that leads to diseases that kill people, we do what we can to avoid making that same mistake twice. I'm not sure why this is an objectionable or questionable notion.
slavik81 7y ago
It's not the same. Live ocean creatures are isolated from each other. They're stored in water-tight containers by necessity. By contrast, live land animals are stored in cages and often stacked on top of each other. Vox has a video explaining "Why new diseases keep appearing in China" [1]. They include footage of Chinese wet markets around the 2:00 mark. I think they make an excellent case for strictly regulating, or even outright banning wet markets. Long ago, Europe had the same problem. The cities were full of wet markets, and were basically the perfect conditions for creating new plagues. There's a nice CGP Grey video on this, "Americapox: The Missing Plague" [2]. [1]: https://youtu.be/TPpoJGYlW54 https://youtu.be/TPpoJGYlW54 [2]: https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk