Video: Blood-Soaked Live-Animal Meat Markets Operating in India, Risking Another Pandemic
For Immediate Release:
8 July 2020
Contact:
Jennifer White +44 (0) 20 7837 6327; [email protected]
Video: Blood-Soaked Live-Animal Meat Markets Operating in India, Risking Another Pandemic
PETA India Calls For Their Immediate Closure to Help Prevent Disease
London – As the COVID-19 pandemic – which experts believe began in a “wet market” in Wuhan, China – rages on, PETA India has released video footage recorded at wet markets across India revealing dog slaughter, a wildlife-meat trade, and shockingly filthy conditions.
The video footage can be viewed and downloaded here.
The footage shows men at Ghazipur Murga Mandi in Delhi slitting live chickens’ throats, skinning the birds, and sorting through their flesh, which was soaked in blood and guts, with their bare hands – as well as bags of live, struggling crabs and eels at a fish market in Malancha, West Bengal. Captured dogs were killed and sold for meat at the Keera Bazaar in Dimapur, Nagaland. (The government of Nagaland has just decided to stop dog-meat sales, but the illegal trade continues in other states.) In Manipur, sellers at the Nute Bazar handled the charred remains of wild animals including monkeys, wild boars, porcupines, and deer – and at Churachandpur market, meat from various wild animals was sold.
The footage shows rampant violations of Indian legislation for wildlife protection, animal welfare, and food safety. PETA India is calling on authorities to close down all such live-animal meat and wildlife markets and follow the lead of China, where there’s a plan to phase out live-poultry markets – like those found throughout India – because they risk spreading disease.
“The next deadly virus will be just around the corner as long as filthy ‘wet markets’ filled with raw meat and sick and stressed animals are permitted to operate,” says PETA Director Elisa Allen. “PETA is calling for the closure of these Petri dishes for pandemics.”
PETA – whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview – notes that outbreaks of swine flu, avian flu, HIV, foot-and-mouth disease, mad cow disease, and other illnesses have also stemmed from capturing or farming animals for food.
PETA opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information on helping animals, please visit PETA.org.uk.
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