UNHEALTHY MIX OF ANIMALS, HUMANS

Forwarded message from Yashwini1@aol.com

[ Subject: Unhealthy mix of animals, humans
[ From: Yashwini1@aol.com
[ Date: Sun, 2 Oct 2005

Unhealthy mix of animals, humans

By CNN's Marianne Bray
CNN
Monday, May 9, 2005

[Caption]  Most flu pandemics are thought to have emerged
          from live animal markets.

HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- In a bustling market in the
southern Chinese province of Guangdong, dogs, cats,
chickens, frogs, snakes, turtles and palm civets are
stacked on top of each other in crates, wire cages and
water buckets ready for sale.

Customers peer at the caged animals before choosing their
meal of the day. They watch as the butcher cuts up the
animal with knives and machetes, spreading blood, guts,
faeces and urine all over the market floor.

People from South China believe that eating wild animals
is good for their health and vitality, and gulping down
such exotic fare as cobra and Asiatic brush tailed
porcupine is seen as a symbol of social status.

Indeed, there is a saying in South China that "anything
with four legs, except a chair, and anything that flies,
except an aeroplane, can be eaten."

One especially famous dish is the "Dragon-Tiger-Phoenix
Soup," a brew made up of snake, cat and chicken.

South China offers the most exotic fare from all over the
globe -- by some accounts at least 60 species can be
found in any one market --thrusting together
microorganisms, animals and humans who normally would
never meet.

This thriving trade gives the manufacturing hub that
straddles the Pearl River Delta the unenviable title of
being the "petri dish" of the world.

"Animals arrive at these markets stressed, diseased,
dying and dead," Animals Asia, a Hong Kong-based charity
dedicated to ending cruelty for animals in the region,
says on its Web site.

"These animals have no free access to food and water or
shelter from the elements and are mixed
indiscriminately."

It was from just such a market in a village near the
provincial capital of Guangzhou that researchers believe
the deadly SARS virus originated in 2003, with civet cats
high on the list of suspects.

The respiratory disease, which killed 774 people and
sickened 8,098 in 30 nations, sparked panic in nearby
Hong Kong, with most of its 7 million residents donning
masks in a bid not to be infected when someone coughed or
sneezed.

Public campaigns warned Hong Kongers to wave good-bye
instead of shaking hands and to avoid touching elevator
buttons and escalator handrails.

But SARS was not an isolated outbreak.

South China has long been the epicenter of pandemic flus,
giving birth to three or four global outbreaks a century.

The Asian flu of 1957 and the Hong Kong flu of 1968 are
both believed to have originated in southern China, while
the Russian flu of 1977, which appeared in the city of
Anshan, was widely thought to be a re-emergence of the
1957 flu.

And some experts, including Kennedy Shortridge, who
worked in Hong Kong for many years and teaches at New
Zealand's Auckland University, believe the Spanish flu of
1918 spread along the Chinese coast and was carried to
America by Chinese immigrants.

That flu alone killed one in 60 of the world's people at
the time.

All these flu pandemics can be traced to viruses caught
from birds. Virologists believe the flu jumped species
when ducks were domesticated in South China 3,000 years
ago.

With their weak immune systems, ducks become flu
incubators, with the virus then jumping to pigs and
mutating to a form people can catch.

Living cheek to jowl While live animal markets can be
found all over Asia, South China is unique because so
many people live so close together, with a very
traditional way of life abutting a glittering modern
China.

Guangdong province has become China's most populous area,
with migrants swelling the population to 110 million
people. Across the province, for every square kilometer
there are 618 people living on top of each other in
towering blocks.

In Guangzhou, the New Baiyun International Airport
handles nearly 500 flights a day, serviced by multi-lane
highways and 5-star hotels that have sprouted in empty
fields, making it a flu heartland.

Outside the city limits, farmers eat, sleep and work in
teeming and cramped quarters with ducks, chickens and
pigs in traditional and often squalid conditions,
creating a toxic brew that can easily spread to the
modern China, and to the rest of the world.

This is also a place where dietary staples and
traditional Chinese medicine like turtle shell are in hot
demand. Early on, a lack of regulations, record-keeping
and research between Hong Kong and China, and a
suppression of information by Beijing, stunted any
efforts to clamp down on outbreaks.

But in many ways, SARS was a wake-up call to China,
scaring authorities into action.

After seeing the rapid toll SARS took on the economy and
public sentiment in 2003, health experts told a
conference in Bangkok last year that China is now getting
serious about stopping the spread of AIDS.

Last year China began offering voluntary testing and
counseling and free medication for the poor.

China says around 840,000 people are infected with
HIV/AIDS, but the United Nations has said the number
could be higher.

As Chinese authorities begin realizing the importance of
preventing flu epidemics and other diseases, health
experts say they face difficult challenges.

The number of animals held in captivity is rising as is
the transport of animals, all of which allows viruses to
make the jump with more opportunity, Malik Peiris, a
professor of microbiology at the University of Hong Kong,
told CNN.

China's millions of migrant workers, who make a beeline
for the prosperous south and are difficult to keep track
of, could further spread viruses.

Experts say China needs to monitor what is happening on
the ground and learn more about the ecology of animals
that are farmed to avoid future pandemics.

"By doing surveillance we know what is circulating, we
know what is out there, and which are most serious
contenders," says Peiris.

"One can narrow potential culprits and be prepared with
vaccines."

CNN.com - Bird flu may kill 150m, warns U.N. - Sep 30, 2005

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/asiapcf/09/29/birdflu.un/index.html

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    "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not so send
peace, but a sword.
    "For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the
daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in
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    "And a man's foes shall be they of his own household.
- Matthew 10:34-36.

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