they would not be different from countless other grocery stores or street markets around the globe. What makes some of those places different is not only the large diversity of animal species that are sold, but also the way in which many are kept on display, to be butchered on site on the customers’ request. Cages and stand spaces are so limited that animals are mostly crammed into tight spaces, piles and shelves, where lower levels are constantly flooded with the droppings of upper ones. Wild animals (such as turtles, bamboo rats, badgers, hedgehogs, otters, civet cats, snakes, bats, pangolins) might have been taken directly from the wild, but more often they are raised in the numerous farms run by family enterprises. Many pathologists and virologists have warned authorities of the public health dangers that these conditions represent . The regular mixing of a high diversity of pathogens,
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from wild and domestic species, in an environment of acute stress for the animals and poor sanitary conditions, and where hosts from all species meet, creates the perfect conditions for the emergence of novel pathogens that can make their way to humans, be it through a wound, the cross-contamination of food or by the air, through the aerosolization of organic material. China had already banned the trade and consumption of wildlife following the 2002-03 SARS outbreak, but the prohibition was short-lived, and while lasting led to the explosion of the illegal market, as it did when the ban was attempted in 2013-14, in response to avian influenza H7N9 (paradoxically, in parallel with the ban of the trade of wild animals due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, the Chinese government also
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