CHORUS OF CALLS FOR END TO LIVE ANIMALS MARKETS!
April 9th, 2020
They say politics makes strange bedfellows. Well, in these very strange times, politics is making for extremely strange bedfellows. Senator Cory Booker, New Jersey Democrat and former presidential contender and Senator Lindsey Graham, a conservative Republican from South Carolina, have banded together – with more than 60 congressional lawmakers – to plead with the World Health Organization to close all wet markets around the world as the coronavirus continues to wreak havoc on human health and the global economy. While their respective motives for this bipartisan effort may be starkly different, as Booker is a vegan, we are thrilled they got together on this most crucial issue.
As you likely know by now, the coronavirus started in a wet market in China, where wild and domestic animals are killed for human consumption in a cesspool of blood, guts, urine and feces that has been described as a petri dish for disease. SARS also began in a wet market in China. Zoonotic illnesses are transferred from animals to humans in the process of humans exploiting animals. One scientist called it “nature’s revenge.” What you may not realize is that there are thousands of live animal markets in the U.S. In fact, there are more than eighty in New York City alone, a metropolis that has become the global epicenter of the #COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier this week, Dr. Neal Barnard, the President of Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, made news when he called on the U.S. Surgeon General, in a “legal Petition for Rulemaking,” to shut down all U.S. live animal markets immediately. PCRM represents 12,000 doctors. In the conversation below, Dr. Barnard explains, to the 60,000 viewers who watched, that we must work now to prevent future pandemics that could be even worse!
Officials fighting the coronavirus in the U.S., including Dr. Anthony Fauci, a White House Coronavirus Task Force member, have decried Asia’s live animal markets. But, this video, by TheirTurn.net‘s Donny Moss, asks: Will Dr. Fauci also call for the closure of U.S. wet markets?
PCRM’s petition lays out the organization’s case for closure of all U.S. live animal markets this way.
“There must not be another pandemic. To ‘prevent the introduction, transmission, and spread of communicable diseases’ in the United States, the Surgeon General must promulgate regulations that prohibit the sale, transfer, donation, other commercial or public offering, or transportation, in interstate or intrastate commerce, of live birds, mammals, reptiles, and amphibians to retail facilities that hold live animals intended for human consumption.”
Anyone from the slaughter industry is invited on JaneUnChained News at any time to offer their response.
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