In 2021, investigators visited live-animal markets in China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Laos, and Sri Lanka. Customers can buy both living and dead animals at these markets.

PETA Asia’s new footage shows chickens, bats, monkeys, civet cats, fish, pigs, and other animals, both dead and alive, on sale for food or to be used in traditional medicine, in entertainment, or in other ways. Carcasses were displayed on blood-streaked countertops, and both live animals and raw flesh were handled without gloves. These markets are cesspools of filth.

Conditions were nearly identical to those documented in two previous PETA Asia investigations into these markets. Sick and stressed animals of uncertain origin were packed closely together in stressful environments. Chickens, personable animals who enjoy socializing, didn’t even have enough space to spread their wings, and larger animals such as a macaque and a caracal cat, animals who roam far and wide in nature, had barely enough space to turn around in. Some cages had feces encrusted at the bottom, and stacking them up facilitated the spread of disease. Dead squirrels, civet cats, bats, birds, and rats were sold in open-air markets without any apparent hygiene protocols.

An investigator was told that customers could purchase the flesh of bats and monkeys purportedly for medicinal purposes.

Most scientists are convinced that the coronavirus originated in a live-animal market in China, where animals of a wide range of species are sold alongside dead animals and produce.

Although the World Health Organization (WHO) is investigating live rabbits, bats, civet cats, and ferret badgers as carriers of the virus that causes COVID-19, all are still offered for sale. Deadly outbreaks of mad cow disease, avian flu, swine flu, SARS, HIV, and more have all stemmed from capturing animals in nature or farming them for food.

Just as we don’t want to be infected with the coronavirus or die of COVID-19, other animals don’t want to suffer or be killed for food. Most of us dislike being quarantined in our homes, yet billions of animals who are exploited for food spend their entire lives in small, cramped, filthy spaces, unable to turn around or stand up and suffering from respiratory diseases caused by living amid their own waste. Their only escape is when their throats are slit and their bodies dismembered, often while they’re still conscious.

All live-animal markets must go, including the hundreds that operate right here in the U.S. PETA is urging WHO to take the most fundamental step and shut down these markets. PETA Asia has written to health officials throughout Asia to demand that the disgusting live-animal markets be closed.

After a solid year of appeals from PETA, undercover video recordings of live-animal markets, “blood”-soaked protests, and signatures gathered from more than 200,000 PETA supporters, WHO is finally urging countries to suspend the sale of live wild mammalian animals in food markets as an emergency measure, saying wild animals are a leading cause of emerging infectious diseases like COVID-19.

This is a step in the right direction but does nothing to stop animals like chickens, pigs, fish, and others from being sold, even though confining and killing them in filthy live-animal markets also contributes to the spread of disease.

You can also help prevent the next global pandemic by dumping meat, eggs, and dairy. The only truly sustainable and ethical way to live is vegan.

Join PETA in urging the World Health Organization to call for an end to all deadly live-animal markets around the globe.

Please send polite comments to:

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus
Director-General, World Health Organization
[email protected]