Many wildlife and conservation groups view the Covid-19 pandemic as a great opportune moment to close down live animal markets (‘wet markets’), if not all wildlife trade.
These claims have received some tailwind from some politicians, lawmakers, and health officials who called the World Health Organization to order a shutdown of live animal markets. Of course much of that is due to political interests related to the U.S.-China trade war, as many American politicians focused solely on Chinese live animal markets instead of all of them, or all the wildlife trade. But anyway The WHO pushed back on the calls to ban these markets, saying that they need to be “well regulated and managed”, not closed down.

Many animal liberation groups also view this pandemic as a great opportune moment, but obviously they are making a much broader and more accurate connection between pandemics and animal consumption, calling to close down all the factory farms as they are the ideal environment for zoonotic pathogens (animal-borne pathogens that can infect humans) to develop and spread.

Another motive of animal liberation groups might be the fear that if only live animals markets would be closed down, since humans’ desire for animal flesh won’t go down with it, that means that at least some of the humans who consume animals’ flesh in these markets would get more of it from factory farms. So this call might actually end up increasing animal suffering.

But there is no need to rack your brains over this as none of it is going to happen. Even the current pandemic won’t make humanity decide to close down the live animal markets, not to mention stop consuming animal based food. No matter what the results of this pandemic are, even the live animal markets won’t be closed down permanently, and certainly not factory farms. Continue reading →