How are the wet markets common in East Asia so much different/worse than a typical farmers market in your local town? Is it the type of or amount of or sanitation of food products?

Question

I just dont get what is so egregiously different about these markets that justify articles be written about banning their practice.

In: Biology

Answer 1

I’ve never seen any live animals at a US farmers market. Asian wet markets have cages of diverse kinds of wild animals, things like chickens, ferrets whatever. All alive and next to/on top of each other’s cages.

This puts the customers not only in direct contact with these live animals, but also the animals in contact with each other. It’s a perfect little Petri dish for viruses to get into humans. Even if the virus is too different to get directly into humans there can be some other beast that can serve as an intermediary.

Combine this with the insane population density in eastern China and you have pandemics waiting to happen.