Dear Friend,

Terrified cats huddle together in a filthy cage, forced to wait for someone to buy them for slaughter.

Live frogs are piled on top of each other in bags next to the mutilated bodies of those killed before them.

Chickens with open wounds are bound tightly together. They cry out while watching the blood of birds and other animals pool on the floor below them.

Nearly a month after the pandemic introduced the term "wet market" to much of the world, live-animal markets like the one in China where the novel coronavirus is thought to have originated are still operating—both in the U.S. and around the world. That's why we must take action NOW before the next deadly disease has a chance to take root.

Please, help keep PETA's work to close live-animal markets and stop the suffering of animals used for their flesh going strong by making a special gift of $3 or more today.

This week, PETA Asia released footage shot days ago inside the grisly markets in Indonesia and Thailand where live animals are still being sold and killed despite warnings from officials. This disturbing new investigation shows gloveless live-animal market workers hawking bloody chunks of animals to shoppers while covered with the gore of the chickens, snakes, rats, and other animals they killed. Flies can be seen swarming around the bodies of dead pigs and other animals, and streaks of blood from gutted fish and slaughtered animals cover countertops and floors.

Nearly 75% of new infectious diseases affecting humans originated in other animals, but they aren't the ones to blame for the outbreaks—humans are. The spread of COVID-19, swine flu, SARS, Ebola, and many other dangerous infectious diseases can often be traced to wet markets, filthy factory farms, and other breeding grounds for pathogens where animals are abused and killed to satisfy the world's meat habit.

Your generous support today will give an immediate boost to our work to close down live-animal markets and stop the tremendous suffering that they're responsible for. As little as $3 can make a big impact on our vital work.

Wet markets aren't a problem that's limited to China, Thailand, or other Asian countries—there are disease-ridden facilities right here in the U.S. that officials at the highest levels have warned pose similar major health risks. Today, more than 80 live-animal markets and slaughterhouses can be found in New York City alone, and they're allowed to operate in many other crowded major cities, like Los Angeles, too.

Thanks to the determination of PETA supporters around the world, the cry to close these horrifying markets is growing louder every day. PETA was the first organization to demand that the World Health Organization call for an end to all live-animal markets, and earlier this week, a bipartisan group of 60 legislators made a similar request. More than 120,000 people have now taken action against wet markets on our website, and they were joined on Friday by The Sopranos and Tommy actor, New Yorker, and Honorary PETA Director Edie Falco, who wrote a powerful letter to New York's mayor calling for the permanent closure of all live-animal markets in the city in order to help prevent other deadly viruses from jumping to humans.

Such markets put humans at risk and sentence animals to a miserable death. Please help us do even more to shut them down by making a much-needed gift right now.

For humans—and all animals—there's simply no time to lose.

Kind regards,

Danielle Katz
Campaigns Director
PETA