THE FOLLOWING LINKED article from the Sydney Morning Herald ‘Explainer’ series (very comprehensive reporting), explains how the eating of wildlife is introducing novel pathogens into human populations. With the latest corona virus, that is putting the globe into pandemic lockdown, it was possibly via bats or Pangolin victims sold at Chinese ‘wet markets’.

But from apes and monkey bushmeat sold in Africa and linked to Ebola, to the Australian commercial and government-sanctioned push for humans and their pets to eat kangaroos slaughtered in unsanitary field situations, the risk posed by bushmeat is great.

The article also lays out in great detail the worldwide criminal exploitation of wildlife for profit, a trade that is now right behind guns, drugs and human trafficking in profit for criminal gangs.

How does an epidemic spread and what does the wildlife trade have to do with it?
It’s worth billions of dollars to organised crime — after guns, drugs and human trafficking. But why is the illegal wildlife trade at the centre of the coronavirus epidemic?
By Sherryn Groch, The Sydney Morning Herald. 25 February 2020