Chinese ‘Wet market’ reopens and continue selling dogs, bats and cats

Team Udayavani, Mar 31, 2020, 5:46 PM IST

Chinese live animal markets have reportedly reopened and are now selling animals for human consumption. As new cases of the coronavirus continue to decline in China, thousands of people have started to flood back into controversial wet markets across the country.

Many animals including bats and the highly endangered pangolin have been trapped and kept ready for slaughter.

The Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was shut down in January and in February China declared an immediate ban on the trade and consumption of wild animal. However, now that China says it’s beaten the virus, the markets seem to have resumed business as usual.

It is said that a medicine seller at a market in southern China, was seen advertising bats, snakes, lizards and toads to assist with common ailments and another market in southwest China, was full of cats and dogs stuffed into cages in filthy conditions and available for slaughter.

This isn’t the first virus that has been linked to wet markets, the SARS outbreak in 2003 also thought to have originated there