INTERVIEW
On January 12, the WHO announced the discovery of a new coronavirus that appeared a few weeks earlier in China, on an animal market. On February 7, scientists from an agricultural university in southern China identified the pangolin, a small scale herbivore, as a possible intermediate host for the virus, the animal reservoir being the bat. If research on the origins of the virus continues at present, for Professor Didier Sicard one thing is certain: animal trafficking may be directly linked to the emergence of this pandemic.
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Professor of medicine and former president of the National Consultative Ethics Committee, Didier Sicard has long denounced the survival of a traffic which he immediately calls "mafia" at the microphone of Europe 1. He warns that global pandemics are led to multiply "as long as we do not criminalize the trafficking of animals", including that taking place in China.
Disastrous health conditions on the markets
"The [Wuhan] market housed a large number of these animals at the end of December: live pangolins and bats in wicker baskets." He describes animals locked up in deplorable sanitary conditions, handled by careless buyers. Inevitably, animals carrying unknown diseases come into contact with humans.
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Around the world, and particularly in Asia, the trade in wild animals does not seem to be slowing down. "The market has never existed in such a large way in a very large city and there are new sectors", poses Didier Sicard. "The problem is that the scenario happened in an identical fashion near Hong Kong 17 years ago, at the time of the SARS-1 epidemic."
According to him, the Chinese authorities are doing nothing to fight against a "global, underground and mafia" traffic which represents "several tens of millions of dollars". If an international convention prohibits trafficking in animals, it is in fact not respected and is not subject to any sanction. Didier Sicard calls for the subject to take on an "international dimension" so that China can finally take more severe measures.