In fetid rows of stalls at Bangkok’s Chatuchak Market, mongooses, polecats, meerkats, ferrets and cougars are packed in. Civet cats – which likely bridged SARS to humans – are bred and sold.
These scenes not only make people like Steve Galster anxious, they belie any claim the sprawling market is not an outbreak waiting to happen and already a breeding ground for viruses, as acknowledged by health officials for the first time yesterday.
“Why are they being allowed to be sold, given what we know?” Galster said today of how viruses can leap from animals to humans under such conditions. “And these dealers are taking us into the back and showing us everything else they can sell – from zebras to hippos.”
Still, the founder of anti-trafficking group Freeland, which last year seized on the pandemic to campaign against the wildlife trade’s threat to human…
