United Poultry Concerns - [link removed]
31 January 2020

Wet Markets or Walmart? Animal Consumption & the Coronavirus

By Karen Davis, PhD, President of United Poultry Concerns

This article was first published on January 30, 2020 on the Animals 24-7 website
[link removed]


Reminders of Animal Suffering in Daily Life

Apart from a small but perhaps widening circle of optimism, it is hard to figure
whether progress for farmed animals is actually happening in modern society.
While it's great seeing more plant-based products in local supermarkets, the
amount of meat displayed in the aisles has not lessened, nor, apparently, has
the amount of it exiting the stores in millions of plastic shopping bags each
day.

I was thinking about the reminders of animal suffering in our daily lives, here
in America - reminders so familiar that they go unnoticed by most of us- while
reading about the recent outbreak of a new strain of contagious coronavirus in
China and Hong Kong that has been traced to one or more live animal markets in
the city of Wuhan in central China, where, as in all fresh-kill "wet" markets,
highly stressed animals, both wild and domestic, huddle in cages and tanks
awaiting their turn to be slaughtered.


The Taste for 'Warm Meat' in China and Hong Kong

A January 23rd article in The Guardian, "Appetite for 'warm meat' drives risk of
disease in Hong Kong and China," haunts me, as do photographs in media accounts
of customers, sometimes with their children, browsing in Asian markets amid
freshly killed and still living animals in garishly-lit, blood-soaked caverns
that not only don't seem to repulse anyone, but invite enthusiasm for what the
customers perceive as the delectable carnage.


Is Western Society Progressive?

I'm tempted to think, "Well, at least we've come a long way from that," but I
don't quite believe it. Is it moral progress to go from buying meat in a market
filled with the recently beating and still beating hearts of wild and
domesticated animals, to browsing over the antiseptically-doctored flesh of
birds, mammals and fish at Walmart and Whole Foods from which the odors of death
and the faces of the animals have been purged?

The Guardian notes that a Walmart store close to a "wet" market in China
bordering Hong Kong has only a trickle of customers, compared to the shoppers
who appear each day at daybreak at the market to assess the freshly-killed flesh
by smell, color, and touch, and who consider "warm" meat safer to consume than
"some diseased animal" chilled or frozen at Walmart.

If rural people in China and Hong Kong, who traditionally have not had
refrigerators and thus by long habit prefer freshly killed animals over
preserved flesh, start to prefer the Walmart experience over the wet market
experience, will this be progress for animals?


George Bernard Shaw on the Custom of Atrocity

The British playwright and socialist advocate George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
said custom will reconcile people to any atrocity. Take Salisbury Maryland, the
home of Perdue Farms, where a McDonald's sits on one side of the highway and a
chicken slaughterhouse looms on the other, surrounded by sagging truckloads of
chickens waiting on the loading dock to be killed. There is no clear evidence
that the sight of suffering in others evokes empathy or protest in the majority
of people, and the first shock of seeing suffering can wear off. Even if it
doesn't, people have many ways of not seeing or caring.


False Guilt & Indifference to Animals

The fact that animals are suffering and dying for appetites that can be
satisfied by plant-based foods makes some, perhaps many, people uncomfortable,
though not necessarily out of guilt. People get annoyed that you're bothering
them about animals, trying to curtail their freedom and uncover a guilt they may
or may not feel, so that some end up feeling "guilty" because they don't feel
guilty, just vexed that they're being victimized.

Deborah Cao, a professor at Griffith University in Australia and an expert on
animal protection in China, observes in The Guardian article that a deep
contributor to the continuing preference for freshly-killed animals in China -
even though China has been identified as the source of most avian and other
transmittable flu viruses going back to the 1918 "Spanish Flu" which killed 50
million people worldwide - the biggest factor, she says, is "the indifference or
perception of people who simply regard animals as food, tools, or as things that
people can do anything they want to. In particular, there is no perception of
farm animals as having feelings, or being capable of feeling pain or suffering."


Is Animal Suffering Enough to Win People Over?

There is evidence to support the belief that most people in modern western
society recognize that other animal species have feelings and can experience at
least pain and fear, but how much does this recognition count in their thinking
and buying behavior?

In a recent discussion with a fellow animal rights activist, we shared our
concern that animals and animal rights still have little traction with the
general public. Animals and animal rights seem to need to be bundled into
arguments on behalf of health, taste, convenience, cost, the environment, and
other issues in order to be heard. That said, there are, I believe, images, and
not just mirages, of light in the long slog for animals and animal liberation.
We do reach people with our message, just not enough people yet. Hopefully,
human moral evolution is happening and animal advocates are helping to make it
happen.


Ending the Traffic in Animals

Since we are in the midst of a factual and perceptual muddle where animals are
concerned, we must do what we can in our individual lifetimes to advocate for,
and embody to the best of our ability, the world that we want to exist for all
sentient beings and habitations on Earth. This of course means working to end
the sorrowful traffic in animals, by weaning others and ourselves if we're still
complicit, from choosing to mistreat and consume animals, whether they are
obviously animals in the wet markets of traditional culture or less obviously
animals in the meat cases of Walmart, Whole Foods and their like.

_____________________________

Reference

Michael Standaert. Appetite for 'warm meat' drives risk of disease in Hong Kong
and China. The Guardian, January 23, 2020.
[link removed]

_____________________________


For more on the sources of contagious influenza viruses, see
Avian Influenza (Bird Flu) - What You Need to Know.
[link removed]

_____________________________


KAREN DAVIS, PhD is the President and Founder of United Poultry Concerns, a
nonprofit organization that promotes the compassionate and respectful treatment
of domestic fowl including a sanctuary for chickens in Virginia. Inducted into
the National Animal Rights Hall of Fame for Outstanding Contributions to Animal
Liberation, Karen is the author of numerous books, essays, articles and
campaigns. Her latest book is For the Birds: From Exploitation to Liberation:
Essays on Chickens, Turkeys, and Other Domesticated Fowl (Lantern Books, 2019).


Amazon Reviews Praise FOR THE BIRDS: FROM EXPLOITATION TO LIBERATION
by Karen Davis, PhD.

Order Now!
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--
United Poultry Concerns is a nonprofit organization that promotes
the compassionate and respectful treatment of domestic fowl.
Don't just switch from beef to chicken. Go Vegan.
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