Shocking New Video: Blood-Soaked ‘Wet Markets’ Still Open Across Asia

PETA Says World Health Organization Must Demand Gov’t Shutdowns of Filthy Operations in the U.S. and Abroad—For Everyone’s Sake

For Immediate Release:
May 14, 2020

Contact:
David Perle 202-483-7382

As the novel coronavirus continues to sicken and kill people worldwide, PETA is releasing new video footage, recorded in the past few weeks, showing filthy live-animal markets full of dogs, bats, monkeys, civets, and snakes still operating in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, and Thailand.

The video shows live civets (who’ve been linked to SARS) and bats (who’ve been linked to COVID-19) being sold in Indonesia as well as monkeys, birds, and cats being held in cages, all of which were covered with layers of rotten food and feces, on top of and directly next to each other. One rabbit convulsed and died right in front of the investigator. In Thailand, ducks and chickens (who’ve been linked to avian flu) were crammed wing to wing in cages. In the Philippines, workers wearing flip-flops walked across blood-soaked floors and cut up pig and bird carcasses with their bare hands. In Vietnam, the cooked heads and other body parts of dogs were piled on a counter near living animals. Blood, guts, and water covered the floors at every market.

PETA is using the video footage to renew its call on the World Health Organization to urge the closure of live-animal markets worldwide, including the hundreds that are still operating in the U.S.

“The next deadly pandemic is inevitable as long as markets filled with sick and stressed animals are still open,” says PETA President Ingrid Newkirk. “PETA is calling on government officials to shut down these Petri dishes for pandemics.”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—notes that outbreaks of swine flu, avian flu, HIV, hoof-and-mouth disease, mad cow disease, and other illnesses have also stemmed from capturing or farming animals for food.

PETA Asia has called on the health ministers of China, Indonesia, Thailand, and other Asian countries to close “wet markets” there, but it has yet to receive a response from any of them.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.