Asia: Bloody Live Animal Markets Still Open
Part of PETA's motto states: animals are not ours to eat or exploit in any other way. The organization campaigns against speciesism — a worldview that ranks humans as superior to all other living beings.
The coronavirus originated at a meat market and continues to spread.
Now brand-new video footage, filmed by PETA Asia at live animal markets in Tomohon, Indonesia, and Bangkok, Thailand, reveals unimaginable conditions.
The organization is once again calling on the World Health Organization via petition to advocate for the closure of all live animal markets worldwide — including in Germany.
Unimaginable Conditions at Asian Markets
The footage shows people in flip-flops walking across blood-soaked floors and handling raw pork with bare hands. Blood and rotting flesh are spread across floors and vendor surfaces. Dogs, pigs, and a snake lie dead amid swarms of flies. Chickens and cats are forced to wait in cramped cages before being slaughtered. And next to the carcasses of mutilated frogs stand bags filled with live frogs. Such practices are a global animal welfare issue.
PETA Calls for Closure of All Live Animal Markets
"The next pandemic is just around the corner as long as sick and stressed animals continue to be crammed together on blood-soaked meat markets," said PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. "PETA is urging the World Health Organization to advocate for the closure of these dangerous markets — regardless of whether chickens are being killed in New York or cats in Indonesia."
Other deadly disease outbreaks have already had their origins in the exploitation of wild animals, for example through the capture of wild animals or in agricultural livestock farming – such as swine flu and avian flu, SARS, HIV, influenza, monkeypox, or BSE. Live animal markets are the perfect breeding ground for diseases. Pathogens can easily jump from other species to humans in such settings. The stressed, injured, and sick animals are typically kept in cramped conditions in publicly accessible spaces or on pavements and offered for sale. This brings buyers and sellers into direct contact with excrement, blood, and meat waste, which they then carry with them into restaurants or their homes.
