YEAH, BUT NO ONE HATES PANGOLINS...:

A member of the World Health Organization investigative team says wildlife farms in southern China are the most likely source of the COVID-19 pandemic.

China shut down those wildlife farms in February 2020, says Peter Daszak, a disease ecologist with EcoHealth Alliance and a member of the WHO delegation that traveled to China this year. During that trip, Daszak says, the WHO team found new evidence that these wildlife farms were supplying vendors at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan with animals.

Daszak told NPR that the government response was a strong signal that the Chinese government thought those farms were the most probable pathway for a coronavirus in bats in southern China to reach humans in Wuhan.

Those wildlife farms, including ones in the Yunnan region, are part of a unique project that the Chinese government has been promoting for 20 years now.

"They take exotic animals, like civets, porcupines, pangolins, raccoon dogs and bamboo rats, and they breed them in captivity," says Daszak.

The agency is expected to release the team's investigative findings in the next two weeks. In the meantime, Daszak gave NPR a highlight of what the team figured out.

"China promoted the farming of wildlife as a way to alleviate rural populations out of poverty," Daszak says. The farms helped the government meet ambitious goals of closing the rural-urban divide, as NPR reported last year.

"It was very successful," Daszak says. "In 2016, they had 14 million people employed in wildlife farms, and it was a $70 billion industry."

Then on Feb. 24, 2020, right when the outbreak in Wuhan was winding down, the Chinese government made a complete about-face about the farms.

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