Stopping mpox: wild meat markets are a root cause and must be made safer

Lam, S. and Grace, D. 2024. Stopping mpox: wild meat markets are a root cause and must be made safer. The Conversation.

In many countries around the world, wild animals are sometimes killed for food, including monkeys, rats and squirrels.

Wild meat makes significant contributions to nutrition in Africa and to satisfying food preferences in Asia.

In Africa, the annual harvest of wild meat, estimated at between 1 million and 5 million metric tonnes, is substantial compared to the continent’s livestock production of about 14 million metric tonnes per year.

Public health researchers have long highlighted unhygienic wild meat practices as potentially harmful due to the risk of pathogens jumping from animals to humans, especially through close contact during hunting, processing or consuming undercooked meat.