TEAMS in China are racing to solve the mystery of which wild animal at a Wuhan food market was the source of the coronavirus that leapt into people. Snakes, pangolins or bats? We just don鈥檛 know yet.
What is clear is how seriously China is now clamping down on the trade in wildlife. Last week, the country鈥檚 highest authorities enacted a permanent ban. 鈥淚t is forbidden to hunt, trade and transport terrestrial wild animals that grow and reproduce naturally in the wild for the purpose of food,鈥� says the new law.
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My instinct was to applaud the news. For decades, campaigners have been calling for an end to wildlife markets in China, where animals, including those that are sick or disease-laden, are kept caged, often in poor conditions and near to people. Animal welfare is reason enough to ban them. The markets were also home to the huge under-the-counter trade in illegal fare, such as shark fins.
However, there are risks that prohibiting the markets could drive the trade underground, making the situation worse.
After the outbreak of the SARS coronavirus, which also came from animals, in 2002, legal markets were suspended, but people still bought wildlife on the black market and the virus still spread, said David Heymann at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine at a briefing last week.
Related research backs his warning. A 2018 study led by Yin Li at the China Animal Health and Epidemiology Center found that bans by Chinese authorities on live bird markets amid the 2013 bird flu outbreak led to the spread of that virus to uninfected areas.
The problem was that different provinces implemented bans at different times, meaning poultry prices would be dented in one area, motivating traders to move infected animals elsewhere. 鈥淭his type of behaviour is regularly seen in many outbreaks and is also a significant problem in the containment of African swine fever,鈥� says Chris Walzer at the Wildlife Conservation Society, a US-based charity.
Fortunately, the new ban is different. While it has loopholes (it only covers wildlife traded for food, not for medicine or research), it is immediate, permanent and China-wide. If done well, it could limit the economic incentives that have seen some partial bans fail.
Matt Lowton at the Zoological Society of London says that it may also kick-start a generational change, as children won鈥檛 grow up with the wild animal trade.
The backdrop to all this is that the legal markets were never well-regulated. Richard Thomas at wildlife trade monitoring group TRAFFIC shared a photo with me of a wildlife market where civets, which helped spread SARS to humans, sit caged next to biscuits for human consumption.
Walzer says the ban, like any ban, is likely to encourage criminal activity. But any short-term local spread of viruses that results from such activity will have a small impact in the context of overall gains, he says.
And let鈥檚 not forget about the big picture. Banning wildlife markets in China permanently won鈥檛 end the illegal trade, but will reduce it. If done well, the ban looks like that rarest of things: a faint silver lining amid the coronavirus crisis.
