Anyone who bothered to read the excerpts from the paper and articles I posted and linked to in my post about the direct relationship between eating meat and the epidemic and pandemic diseases that evolve in animals kept to be slaughtered and eaten or, though not mentioned, for eggs - to be slaughtered after their production falls - might have noticed that the last one was not only somewhat different in tone, it carried clearly now discredited claims that the now infamous wet-markets in China and elsewhere are blameless for having the potential that the Covid-19 pandemic has proven they did and do have. I included it for two reasons, to test whether or not the same self-declared super-champions of evidence, science, what is now fashionably referred to as "the data" as to their willingness to read for about five minutes or if they had the reading ability to understand what they've read so as to notice the discrepancy in what I chose to post. That's why I put the half-right and entirely wrong extract from a half-right and, as the pandemic we are going through proves, quite wrong advocacy group for small farmers and marketers over factory farms at the very end of the extracts.
This pandemic has made me extremely pessimistic about the ability of our entertainment addled population to do what is needed to prevent or mitigate such man-created natural disasters. It has confirmed my skepticism of the actual devotion to reasoned assessment of what "the data" shows, of what science can demonstrate. It is a great example of how science actually works in the modern culture of the allegedly educated in which a. the large majority of those who understand some of what is said by scientists will have far from complete understanding, b. that anything the science shows that they don't like or seems too unusual to them or would impinge unfavorably on their preferences and habits will be ignored or rejected. c. that a dangerously large percentage of the allegedly-educated, allegedly liberal or leftist population is as ready to reject good science as the yahoos, the Trump, the Koch family, other billionaire manipulators of the FOX-Sinclair-Limbaugh audience are.
The people whose hearts might be in the right place - at least if you don't mind the obvious cruelty to animals involved - at GRAIN and they certainly know the issue, going back well before the Covid-19 epidemic, the article I linked to shows that. But the excerpt I took, instead of the extremely informative information contained at the link showed their romantic view of small animal husbandry operations and the appalling "small traders" at the wet markets shows that they are unable to overcome their romanticism and political-economic preferences to face, squarely what was warned about by science even as they must have been reading it. The direct or probable link between epidemic diseases in people and wild animals, probably the consumption of them by poor people or for sale or as a matter of "tradition" or "culture"* has been long established in previous outbreaks of diseases.
I don't know much about GRAIN apart from having read that article and briefly looked at the links contained in it but it is clear that their devotion to evidence and science isn't enough to overcome their non-factual, political and ethical positions. In the case of the "brain trusters" who mocked what I said before, it comes down to nothing so much as not wanting their enjoyment of eating meat impeded by the part that meat-eating played in producing this and other pandemics and epidemics on a smaller scale.
The idea that "tradition" or "culture" should swamp the general health and safety of those having those habits or, as in the case of epidemics and pandemics, wider populations up to and including the world is totally daffy. And the claims of honoring such traditions and culture are never done evenly or equally, I would guess that the very same people who get misty eyed over the "tradition" of the wet-marketing of wild animals would be opposed to fox-hunting or many of the various ways that animals are cruelly tortured and killed by human beings, especially if such people are not denoted to be sufficiently "ethnic" or, well, what it comes down to is "exotic".
As to how "traditional" the infamous wet-markets of China were, I don't know but I read in the past few months that they arose as a desperation measure of Mao dictatorship when their theory based Marxist mismanagement of agriculture caused famines, something that has happened a number of times as Marxist dictatorship has been imposed on countries. I also read that, far from feeding the poor, that the wet-market trade served an affluent clientele. But even if it were a well-established part of the romantically viewed, peasant-based habits, the "culture" the world does not owe any culture, anywhere the body-count in these pandemics that are the price we will pay for continuing such "cultural practices" that is as true a cost to the human population as the cost of allowing enormous factory farming of pigs, chickens, ducks, etc. brings us so that someone can cook the recipe as found in the New York Times Sunday feuilleton or as handed down by dear old grandma.
And that doesn't even begin to get to the most obvious thing about this, the enormous cruelty to animals involved in it. Having grown up on a small farm, having grown up around agriculture, I have seen animals slaughtered to be eaten, there is no way to do so humanely, it is cruel and painful, no matter if that is done in an industrial slaughter house or by a peasant in the farmyard or a "small trader" in a wet market or Donald Trump jr. trying to prove his manhood to his daddy and his pals. Such "cultural practices" are certainly nothing the animals killed would choose, the cost to them is obvious, the cost to the general human population that comes from it requires the kind of knowledge that modern people, "western culture" if you want to put it in ways more congenial to the racist white and privileged, are alleged to value. But that valuing of science is certainly a sometimes thing.
Update: Well, it certainly was known that eating wild animals could be dangerous, here's an excerpt from the CDC, from back in the days before the Republicans started destroying it.
How is Lassa fever virus spread?
Lassa fever is spread primarily by rats. Rats that carry the Lassa fever virus live in homes and areas where food is stored. People usually become ill with Lassa fever after accidentally eating or breathing in rat droppings or urine. This can happen through touching objects or eating food contaminated with rat droppings or urine, or after cleaning activities like sweeping. People who prepare or eat infected rats for food can also become ill with Lassa fever. Lassa fever may also spread when a person comes into contact with an infected person’s blood, tissue, or body fluids, especially when that person is seriously ill.
And, though it hasn't happened yet, there is a good chance that that terrible disease could mutate into a form that spreads easily from human to human.
The study published on 17 October in the New England Journal of Medicine, eases fears that Lassa had mutated into a super-bug that was spreading swiftly between people. Instead, the viral genomes harvested from 220 patients were surprisingly diverse, indicating that most people had not acquired their infections from someone else . . .
. . . People can contract Lassa virus from direct contact with the African soft-furred rat (Mastomys natalensis) — such as by eating them. And infected rodents can indirectly transmit the virus by salivating or urinating on rice, cassava and other crops stored in barrels or left to dry in the sun. The infection can also pass from person to person through bodily fluids — which is how many health workers contract the virus.
As with Ebola, Lassa causes fevers and can lead to death as a result of internal bleeding. Mortality rates range from 25% to 69% in West Africa.
Just to point out what might be coming our way in the future, though there is absolutely nothing to say that something as bad or worse won't come from a factory farm in the United States or from someone here eating wild animals. There is nothing special about the animals Westerners are used to eating that prevents them from being the source of such potentially pandemic illnesses. Not to mention many bacterial diseases that routinely are featured in our news as American means of slaughter guarantee that if you're eating the meat America loves to eat you're eating chicken shit or cow shit or pig shit.
That article was from the source held as authoritative by educated and allegedly-educated people in the US and elsewhere, Nature, less than two years ago.
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