LAGOS (Reuters) – A few months after the Epe fish market was blocked to stop the spread of the new coronavirus, vendors at the Lagos state site in southern Nigeria are buying, promoting and exchanging animals.
A seller untie an endangered pangolin with a machete, and grass-cutting rodents are skinned.Most mask providers.
Experts say COVID-19, which killed about a thousand more people in Nigeria, went from animals to humans, in all likelihood in a rainforest in China, but few people in Epe were worried.
“We are not afraid of it because the coronavirus is not internal to meat,” said vendor Kunle Yusaf. “We eat meat, even this coronavirus, and we don’t have any disease.”
Cambridge University epidemiologist Dr Olivier Restif has called for more education in the animal industry and hygiene.
“We are heavily involved with risk,” he said of markets where animals are kept alive nearby, but he warned that simply banning markets could alienate other people and lead to illegal trade.
Charity WWF International said the pandemic “should be a call for attention.”But the booming industry in Epe has shown unchanged attitudes despite the nearly 800,000 dead worldwide through the virus.
Nigeria is also a hub for illegal industry in Asia.
Nigeria’s National Agency for Environmental Standards and Regulations (NESREA) responded to requests for comment.
WWF The economic tension of the pandemic had undermined conservation budgets in many countries.
Chinedu Mogbo, founder of the Green Fingers Wildlife Conservation Initiative, a wildlife sanctuary near Epe, hopes to inspire Nigerians to reduce the consumption of wild animal meat and classical animal medicine, which can boost the anti-ecological management of animals that may announce transmission of the virus.
“They’ll thank you more if you come to see them,” Mogbo said.
(Reporting via Angela Ukomadu and Libthrough George; Editing via Alexis Akwagyiram and Janet Lawrence)
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