Exotic Chinese Farms May Just be Why Humans Contracted Covid from Animals

It's possible that the Coronavirus spread between species on farms that supply live civets, snakes, and bamboo rats.

Exotic Farm Experiences

Virologists discovered a bat virus nearly similar to the Coronavirus circulating in humans in Yunnan, the southern Chinese province where many of the now-closed wildlife farms are located. Scientists claim that certain wildlife farms sold animals that could be infected with other coronaviruses, such as civets, and that these animals could be vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

"Potentially, some of these animals were contaminated at those farms and then took the virus into the market," Peter Ben Embarek, the Danish food safety scientist in charge of the WHO delegation, told Science in February after returning from China adding that further research was required.

Since several wildlife farms bordered wilderness areas, captured animals may have potentially become poisoned by infected bats' urine. Furthermore, according to Li, some farms' ostensible breeding practices served as a front for capturing and selling wild animals masquerading as farm-bred animals.

Zoonotic Disease

The pathogen may have hopped from animal to animal after incubating in a captive animal-whether that animal came from the wild or was bred on a farm-mutating in the process. The virus may have developed to the point that it could infect yet another species: humans, by the time the animal arrived at Huanan or other Wuhan markets.

Wildlife farms are a possible cause of spillover. Still, virus hunter W. Ian Lipkin, director of Columbia University's Center for Infection and Immunity, who was operating in China in January 2020, says he'd be "really shocked" if there's clear proof of it.

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