Booming Trade In Exotic Pets ‘Could Cause A Pandemic’

October 30 2007 by The Systemic Analyst.

In world where the illegal trafficking of humans shows no abating, curtailing the apparently legal trafficking of exotic pets seems highly unlikely despite the clear benefits that might be derived by society.

The Times Online has reported that:

“Dorothy Crawford, Professor of Medical Microbiology at the University of Edinburgh, said that the risk to people from zoonoses – animal-borne microbes – had never been greater, and that there was a need to reexamine our relationship with wild and domestic animals.

Professor Crawford also predicted that global travel would need to be restricted in the event of an avian flu pandemic.

Most emerging infections, including HIV, severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and bird flu had been acquired from animals and no one could say how many other devastating diseases could yet mutate to human beings, Professor Crawford said. “Who knows what could be hiding around the corner? We really have to think about what we are doing,” she said.

Professor Crawford highlighted the example of a consignment of giant Gambian rats, which were flown from Ghana into the US as exotic pets. The rats carried monkeypox virus, which transferred to prairie dogs that were sold in the same pet shop. The prairie dogs then passed the disease to their human buyers. The chain of infection was only terminated after the microbe had infected 71 people. In another instance, crocodiles being farmed in Papua New Guinea to provide luxury items for the West had been infected by a virus from wild pig meat, which crossed to their keeper.” Click here for more.

It’s very unfortunate that the plight of billions of people will never improve until humans can manage to see so many issues from a better vantage point. Professor Crawford’s points are very logical and certainly valid. Are the needs driving people to have exotic pets so sensible? Should the rights of so few really override the safety of so many? If the exotic pet industry is really the only means for those in poorer countries to survive, perhaps it is our wider system that should be risked, not the health of a typically ignorant Western population.

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