Authored by: Tanveer
Ahmed Fahim[1]
The World Health Organization labelled the Coronavirus
Disease 2019 (COVID-19) as a ‘pandemic’ on 11 March 2020.[2]
Pandemics, according to their classical definition,[3] are
trans-border epidemics that that affect a large number of people worldwide.
Till date, over 1,120,000 people have been infected and more than 60,000 lives
have been lost across 202 countries around the world and 2 international
conveyances.[4]
The numbers are only rising exponentially. However, it has been alleged that it
all started from a single piece of legislation. The following analysis shall
observe the birth of the legislation, the industry that was set up after its
enactment and the danger it now poses. Similar events to COVID-19 shall also be
discussed, bringing into perspective the lessons we learned and forgot from the
past.
The
Great Chinese Famine
The ‘Great Chinese Famine’ from 1958-62 killed about
45 million people in China.[5]
The 1970s was a particularly arduous time for China. The communist regimes,
which controlled all food production, were failing to feed its population of
900 million people. China was crumbling. On the verge of collapse, the regime
gave up this control over food production and allowed private farming in 1978.[6]
“It started with mostly peasant-household backward operation of turtles” Peter
Li[7] observes. The encouragement of the
government was inspiring the people to make their living through, no matter
what, any kind of productive activities.[8] The control was lifted to such a
level that there were no legal barrier on the item of production. Down the
road, the Chinese government made a decision that would alter the course of
wildlife trade forever. The ‘Law on the Protection of Wildlife’[9]
(hereinafter LPW) was adopted in 1988. This law designated the wildlife
animals as “resources owned by the State” and protected people engaged in the
“utilization of wildlife resources”. Wildlife farming was finally legalized,
but this was the beginning of the trouble to come.
The problem with the law
The LPW declared the State as owner of the wildlife
resources and ensured the legal rights and interests of the individuals who
were either developing or utilizing ‘wildlife resources’.[10]
Giving the wildlife a status equal to ‘natural resource’ made them a ‘usable
product’ for human benefit. As a result, along with poultry and other
domesticated animals, wild animals like snakes, bears and yes, bats, were
utilized for the human benefit and consumption. The law also provided for
domestication and breeding of wildlife with a prior approval from the State.[11] With the introduction of a licensing system,
small local farms started industrial-sized operations. A bear farm which only
started out three, eventually became a farm containing over a thousand.[12]
Larger populations meant greater possibilities that a
sick animal could spread disease. Farmers were also raising a great variety of
animals, which meant more viruses on the farms. These animals were then
funneled into the wet-market for sale and profit. However, this legal wildlife
farming surge created a cover for the illegal wildlife industry as well.
Endangered animals like tigers, rhinoceroses and pangolins were trafficked into
China. By the early 2000s, these wet-markets were teeming with wild animals.[13]
Moreover, these industrially
produced wild animals are slaughtered by the vendors in front of the customers
in the wet-markets like Huanan.[14] This is a cultural practice
in China to directly watch the slaughtering of the animal they are buying.
Thus, in the wet markets there are lots of dead animals in the shops making it
a confluence of aerosolized particles of all sorts of germs. [15]
The recent pandemic creating Coronaviruses are
considered as ‘zoonotic diseases’ since they are spread to people from animals.
According to the statement by the Wildlife Conservation Society, the inherent
environment and the nature of these wet-markets make it possible for a virus to
make an interspecies leap.[16]
Zoonotic diseases: Bats and
pangolins
Three out of every four novel or looming infectious
diseases in people originate in animals, as per the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.[17]
Bats carry a strikingly higher proportion of zoonotic viruses compared to other
mammals. This is usually passed through their feces. If a bat drops feces onto
a fruit that another animal consumes, that animal in turn becomes a ‘carrier’
for the disease. This then propagates onto humans when these carriers are
guzzled.
Research in genetics has almost confirmed that the
novel coronavirus spreading all over the world — called nCoV-2019 — has its
origins in bats.[18] The virus afterwards transitioned from that
animal, which became a carrier for the bats, to humans at a wet-market, like
the ones in Wuhan. The Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) outbreak,
another coronavirus, has its origins in bats as well. The virus then
transmitted to civets, which afterwards got passed onto humans in a wet-market
in China. The SARS outbreak infected over than 8,000 people and caused the
death of 774 between 2002 and 2003.[19]
In 2016, ‘The Wildlife Protection Law’ as mentioned
above was revised. It had prohibited the hunting, killing, selling and buying
of about 1,800 rare and endangered creatures, save for with special
permissions, noted Li Zhang.[20]
He also adds that trading and consumption of wildlife is both an open threat to
animals, as well as a severe public-health hazard. The pangolin, suspected to
be the source of the novel coronavirus by scientists, is already enlisted.[21]
Near about three-fourths of zoonotic diseases
originate from wildlife, says Erin Sorrell.[22] The
diseases can be dreadfully disastrous: HIV, Ebola, and SARS are among those
diseases that have made the transition from wildlife to humans, thus spawning
international outbreaks.[23]
Wildlife trade in China
In 2017, a government-sponsored report by the Chinese
Academy of Engineering found that the nation’s wildlife trade was worth an
excess of $73 billion and the industry employed well over one million people.[24]
From the emergence of the virus in December 2019, nearly 20,000 wildlife farms
spread across seven provinces in China have been locked down or put under
quarantine. Wildlife breeders specializing in deer, foxes, peacocks and turtles
are on this list, according to local government press releases. [25]
A study by Beijing Normal University and the China
Wildlife Conservation Association in 2012,[26] found that in major cities in China,
one-third of the people had used wild animals in their lifetime for food,
medication or apparel—which was only slightly lesser, compared to their last survey
in 2004. The researchers also discovered that merely over 52% of the total
participants agreed that wild animals should not be consumed. This percentage
was even higher in Beijing; over 80% of residents were against the consumption
of wildlife. Bringing into comparison, about 42% of total participants were
opposing the practice during the last survey which took place in 2004. It is
clear that despite there being a majority of people who did not consume
wildlife during their lifetime, the proportion of people who do consume are not
insignificant. Even though there was an 8 year difference between the two
surveys, and the habits of wildlife consumers having changed merely marginally.
Around the world: Ebola and
SARS
A ban was placed on 54 species of animals after the
SARS outbreak in China, in 2003; after speculations that the disease may have
originated in civets which were sold in a wet-market in the province of
Guangdong. Later that year the ban was lifted, permitting licensed breeders to
continue raising the animals; so as long as they undergo routine sanitation
checks. However, SARS broke out again in Guangdong in the beginning of 2004;
civets at a restaurant tested positive for the virus. Shortly, another ban was
swiftly enacted. A second outbreak had been averted.
Nanshan Zhong, an infectious disease researcher and a
revered figure leading the SARS response, and Guangqiao Zeng wrote in 2006 that
another coronavirus like SARS could possibly develop into an epidemic “if no
action is taken to control wildlife markets.” By 2007, alarms were raised by
researchers once more regarding the trade and consumption of animals like
civets.[27]
In the 2013–16 Ebola outbreak taking place in West
Africa, officials speculated that the hunting and slaughtering of wild animals
were to blame for the initial transition from animals to humans. However,
research now suggests that the ‘jump’ may have occurred when a two-year-old
child played in a hollow tree that was the home to bats which harbored the
virus. Officials implemented a ban on hunting, selling, and eating of wild
meat, even though it later became clear the disease was spreading between
humans.[28]
After all this, it is rather clear that more
consideration should be given to what researchers have to say, in order for the
actions of the Executive to be effective. Also, even if a ban is placed to
control an outbreak, if enough time is not given for the situation to be
brought under control, the same issue or another may arise, thus defeating the
initial ban’s objective.
Lifting the ban and
reinstating: Problem of banning
On January 1, 2020 officials closed the Huanan Seafood
Wholesale Market and the authorities in Wuhan banned the trade of live-animal
across all markets in the city soon afterwards. Afterwards, China’s Legislature
banned the trading and eating of wildlife on February 25, 2020. This was an
effort to prevent zoonotic diseases being transmitted from wildlife to humans.
A legislative spokesman, Zhang Tiewei told Reuters
that the decision came at a "critical moment for the epidemic prevention
and control."[29]
The National People’s Congress has laid down that wildlife trade will be
“severely punished” along with the hunting, transporting and transacting wild
animals for consumption purposes. However, using wildlife for non-edible
purposes such as for medical use, scientific purposes and display, will be
subject to rigorous inspection, confirmation and quarantine probing.[30]
However, there is a catch to banning such a lucrative industry.
"A total ban on trading wild animals would
criminalize a substantial proportion of the Chinese population, and be
untenable," Zhao-Min Zhou, a Chinese wildlife-policy researcher, told
Nature.[31]
He further adds that locking down animal markets would only push the whole
industry underground.
About 150 million people are malnourished in China,
according to a report by the World Food Programme (WFP);[32] for
whom a source of protein is wild meat. Pursuant to a study conducted in 2018[33],
in a survey conducted across Asia, Africa and Latin America, 39% of households
harvest wild meat; poorer households usually rely on this more.
From 2013-2016 during the Ebola outbreak in West
Africa, a ban was implemented on the consumption, hunting and selling of wild
meat by officials, even though it became evident that the virus was being
transmitted from person to person. Counter-intuitively, instead of putting an
end to the trade, it only drove the industry deeper underground. This resulted
in making it virtually impossible for the industry to be regulated, thus making
spillover instances far more challenging to catch.[34]
As a result of markets being unregulated, which is
mainly the case in China, opportunities are presented for maladies to be
transmitted to various other species, which includes humans. Nonetheless, a
long-lasting and comprehensive commitment to administration would necessitate
“substantial resources and oversight,” said Melissa Marx,[35] who
helped lead the Zambia study and worked in Taiwan during the SARS epidemic. She
further adds that “It would be a massive investment in a huge country like
China.”[36]
It now seems that China can neither keep the law, nor
remove it. On one hand, there is the issue of letting the status quo be upheld
and face criticism from citizens and foreign nations; on the other hand there
is the risk of criminalizing an entire industry, thus making the entire trade
go unregulated. In effect, it all hinges on how China administers its markets
and how well it has the black market probed.
Real picture of China
While it may seem that all of China has bat-soup and
snakes for dinner given the photos on social media, this could not be further
from the real picture. Peter Li points
out that, “The majority of the people in China do not eat wildlife animals.
Those people who consume these wildlife animals are the rich and the powerful
–a small minority.”[37]
It is interesting to note that a majority of wildlife trade in China had
already been illegal. The ‘Wildlife Protection Law’ in China made it illegal
for the hunting and trading of endangered species; which was inapplicable to
all wild animals.[38]
Regardless, the system stayed in place mainly due to soft administration and
legal loopholes. Disparity in the names of the breeds and online trading of
exotic animals as household pets are some key examples. This brings into
perspective how much lobbying power the rich and powerful have, despite the
fact that they represent only a small portion the people. Lax enforcement and
inefficient schedules of wildlife animals’ names are some seemingly easy avenues
the Executive should put more assertion upon.
A 2014 study[39]
that surveyed more than a thousand people in five Chinese cities found
radically different practices in different parts of the country. Of the people
who were interviewed, these percentages of people had consumed wildlife animals
in the last year before: 83% in Guangzhou, 14% in Shanghai and merely 5% in
Beijing. All over the country, about 50% of the people interviewed responded
that wildlife should not be consumed at all. The reality is that, for many
Chinese people, the consumption of wild animals is actually an abnormality.
Media outlets which are controlled by the State such as China Daily[40]
have published caustic editorials criticizing this practice and called for an
absolute wildlife trade ban. Peter Li has expressed a small minority in China,
the rich and the powerful, is what propels this industry forward. It is this
minority that the Chinese government chose to favor over the safety of the rest
of this population, which is over 1.43 billion and 18.5% of the world
population.
Even though it may be true that the will of a small
minority has such a prominence, it is still true that half the people
interviewed did in fact admit that wildlife should be consumed. Given that the
classes are divided into two, a compromise must be achieved. Regardless of the
rich and powerful being of such influence, it is nonetheless true that over a
million people are involved in this lucrative industry. The government must not
listen to only one particular voice, but take all voices into account and make
a decision after that.
Conclusion
What started out as a mission to end the horrors of
famine and eradicate poverty, eventually became the cause of a pandemic which
has stopped the whole world in its tracks. Mighty nations are falling prey to a
predator they cannot see, but can only keep themselves ‘locked’ away from. All
this, could possibly have been the result of a single piece of legislation.
However, removing this law would only push the industry underground, making it
even more difficult to regulate. This law has thus proven to be a double edged
sword.
[1] Tanveer Ahmed
Fahim is a 4th Year student at the Department of Law, University of Dhaka.
[2] Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus, ‘WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media
briefing on COVID-19’ (Press Briefing, Geneva, 11 March 2020)
<www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020> accessed 02 April 2020.
[3] Heath
Kelly, ‘The classical definition of a pandemic is not elusive’ (2011) 89 (7)
Bulletin of the World Health Organization
<www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/89/7/11-088815/en/> accessed 02 April 2020.
[4]
Worldometer, ‘COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic’
<www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/> accessed 02 April 2020.
[5] See
for details, Frank Dikötter, Mao's Great
Famine (Walker & Company 2010).
[6]
Lawrence J Lau and Huanhuan Zheng, ‘How Much Slack Was There in the Chinese
Economy Prior to its Economic Reform of 1978?’ (2015) IGEF Working Paper 34
<https://ssrn.com/abstract=2657691> accessed 05 April 2020
[7] Sam
Ellis, ‘Why new diseases keep appearing in China’ (Vox Media, Mar 6, 2020)
<www.vox.com/videos/2020/3/6/21168006/coronavirus-covid19-china-pandemic>
accessed 02 April 2020
[8] Ibid
[9] Law on
the Protection of Wildlife 1988 (LPW 1988).
[10] LPW 1988,
Article 3.
[11] ibid,
Article 17.
[12] Sam
Ellis, ‘Why new diseases keep appearing in China’ (n 7).
[13] Ibid.
[14] Emily
Landon, ‘COVID-19: What we know so far about the 2019 novel coronavirus’ UChicago
Medicine (Chicago, 18 March 2020)
<www.uchicagomedicine.org/forefront/prevention-and-screening-articles/wuhan-coronavirus> accessed 02 April 2020.
[15] Aylin
Woodward, ‘The new coronavirus may have jumped to people from endangered pangolins,
some researchers now suggest’ The Business Insider (NewYork, 08 February
2020)
<www.businessinsider.com/wuhan-coronavirus-pangolins-intermediary-host-2020-2> accessed 02 April 2020.
[16]
Christian Walzer, ‘The COVID-19 pandemic has introduced us to a new word:
Zoonosis’ (Live Science, 2 April
2020) <https://www.livescience.com/dangers-of-zoonoses-pandemics.html> accessed 02 April 2020.
[17]
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, ‘Zoonotic Diseases’ (CDCP
Website, 14 July 2017) <www.cdc.gov/onehealth/basics/zoonotic-diseases.html>
accessed 02 April 2020.
[18] Aylin
Woodward (n 15).
[19] James
Gallagher, ‘Coronavirus: Worldwide cases overtake 2003 Sars outbreak’ (BBC
News, 31 January 2020) <www.bbc.com/news/world-51322733> accessed on 03 April 2020.
[20] Li
Zhang is a Conservation Biologist at Beijing Normal University, China.
[21] Helen
Briggs, ‘Coronavirus: Pangolins found to carry related strains’ (BBC News, 26 March 2020)
<www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-52048195>
accessed 03 April 2020.
[22] Erin
Sorell is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Microbiology and
Immunology at Georgetown University, in Washington, D.C.
[23]
Natasha Daly, ‘Chinese citizens push to abolish wildlife trade as coronavirus
persists’ (National Geographic, 30
January 2020)
<www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/01/china-bans-wildlife-trade-after-coronavirus-outbreak/> accessed 02 April 2020.
[24] Ben
Westcott and Shawn Deng, ‘China has made eating wild animals illegal after the
coronavirus outbreak. But ending the trade won't be easy’ (CNN, 6 March 2020)
<https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/05/asia/china-coronavirus-wildlife-consumption-ban-intl-hnk/index.html> accessed 02 April 2020.
[25] Ibid.
[26] Li
Zhang, ‘Wildlife consumption and conservation awareness in China: A long way to
go’ (2014) 23 Biodiversity and Conservation 2371–2381.
[27] Melody
Schreiber, ‘A Better Way to Stop Coronaviruses’ (The New Republic, 30 January 2020)
<https://newrepublic.com/article/156359/better-way-stop-coronaviruses> accessed 02 April 2020.
[28]
Almudena Marí Saéz and others. ‘Investigating the zoonotic origin of the West
African Ebola epidemic’ (EMBOpress, 30 December 2014)
<www.embopress.org/doi/full/10.15252/emmm.201404792>
accessed on 03 April 2020.
[29] Farah
Master, ‘China bans trade, consumption of wild animals due to coronavirus’ (Reuters, 25 February 2020)
<www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-wildlife/china-bans-trade-consumption-of-wild-animals-due-to-coronavirus-idUSKCN20J069> accessed 02 April 2020.
[30] Ibid.
[31] Smriti
Mallapaty, ‘China set to clamp down permanently on wildlife trade in wake of
coronavirus’ (Nature, 21 February
2020) <www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-00499-2>
accessed 02 April 2020.
[32] World Food Programme, ‘China’ (WFP Website)
<www.wfp.org/countries/china> accessed 02
April 2020.
[33] Martin
R. Nielsen and others, ‘The Importance of Wild Meat in the Global South’ (2017)
146 Ecological Economics 696–705.
[34] Melody
Schreiber, ‘A Better Way to Stop Coronaviruses’ (n 27)
[35]
Melissa Marx is an Assistant Professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of
Public Health.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Sam
Ellis (n 7)
[38] LPW
1988, Article 1
[39] Li
Zhang, ‘Wildlife consumption and conservation awareness in China: A long way to
(n 26)
[40] Qiao Xinsheng, ‘Wildlife trade ban welcome to protect public health’ (China Daily, 2 March 2020) <www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202003/02/WS5e5c4265a31012821727b65f.html> accessed on 02 April 2020
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