China and Its "Wet Markets"

Will China (and other SE Asian countries) give up their traditional wet markets?  After the SARS crisis, the Chinese government cracked down on wet markets forcing them underground.  Sort of.  The markets persisted while the government looked the other way.  Now we have a global pandemic that threatens the health  and livelihood of billions of people.  Any chance that things change in China?

The current COVID-19 crisis was born out of people who worked and shopped at a “wet market” in Wuhan, China. A wet market sells live and dead animals —including fish, birds, badgers, bats, pangolins (scaly anteaters), and turtles — for human consumption. These markets are wet. Water splashes over the sides of open tubs filled with live sea animals that will inevitably be killed; countertops and floors are streaked red with the insides of gutted fish and the blood of slaughtered animals.

China is notorious for lack of hygiene and government oversight of their domestic wet markets. There are separate rules in China for food commodities for export and those for local consumption. The only problem with this duplicity is that it keeps neither their people safe nor those beyond their borders.