A german version of the following text will be sent to the Embassy of the People's Republic of China in Germany, Austria and Switzerland on your behalf.

Dear Sir or Madam,

Covid-19 is a big threat to us humans in all countries over the world.

New infectious diseases appear year after year and most are of animal origin. Most of these zoonotic diseases result from contact with wild animals, as humans are exploiting them more and more for their purposes, thus tearing them from their natural habitats and destroying same habitats – scientific studies have shown, that deforestation plays a major role in this.

Kept close together in markets, many different species in the smallest space, these animals are sold under most adverse conditions. All of these animals can be intermediate hosts for viruses. Scientists are of the opinion that said keeping in confined spaces and the mixing of various animal species enables viruses to mutate more easily, thus in the end becoming more dangerous to humans. Not only the new COVID-19 corona virus disease is most likely from wild animals, but also many more such as the Ebola fever, the SARS pandemic, MERS and AIDS.

The veterinarian and epidemiologist Dirk Pfeiffer is a professor at the City University of Hong Kong. Since 1999 he has also been teaching veterinary epidemiology at the Royal Veterinary College (RVC) in Great Britain, London:

“There are Wet Markets nearly all over Asia, especially in East- and Southeastasia. These are large market halls, often on the lower floors of scyscrapers in cities. Everything is sold there: Meat and fish, fruits, but also living wild or domesticated animals. There is an extremely high concentration of humans and animals in these halls. This means, that different viruses are regularly appearing and circulating in there. It is possible that by chance, as is now the case with Sars-CoV-2, a market like this creates a pathogen that makes you sick and is spread from human to human.”

China has already closed the wild animal markets temporarily, which displays an exemplary approach. China would however be a global pioneer in regards to the prevention of possible future epidemics, if they completely abolished wild animal markets and also stopped wild animal trading.

We all have to rethink in order to preserve our planet with all of its inhabitants – so please, close all wild animal markets in the People’s Republic of China and issue a wild animal trading ban!

Sincerely,