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We all are being exposed to danger as a result of myopic actions

Jan 29, 2020 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

I write in response to your caption “Wildlife Management Commission declares closed hunting seasons for 2020” in your 23rd December 2019 edition.
I am writing in my capacity as the Secretary of the Caribbean Vegetarian-Vegan Charity, which is based in Barbados, and as someone who has been on a plant-based diet for fifty years for animal rights reasons.
The Charity aims to raise awareness as to the human health and environmental benefits of a plant-based diet. It has as its mission statement: “The promotion of a plant-based diet to improve human health; protect the environment; facilitate social justice; and reduce animal cruelty”.
The Coronavirus which is making the news at present, began in China from the eating of bush meat that had the virus [possibly snakes], which then jumped the species boundary as did Swine and Bird Flu, SARS [from civet cats], Ebola [from bats and chimpanzees], MERS [from camel eating in the Middle East], and HIV [attributed to the eating of chimpanzees]. The influenza pandemic of 1918–19 which has been sourced to poultry, killed an estimated 20 to 50 million people.
The negative effect of a meat diet on both human health and the environment is well known, and is the contemporary global driving force for the adoption of a balanced plant-based diet. [See for example the film “Game Changers” on Netflix].
Less well known is the historical role played by meat-eating in the development of the gender division of labour and class society [with men dominating hunting expeditions, and menstruating and pregnant/breast feeding women left at home as hunting liabilities], and also in the creation of weaponry [with spears and bows and arrows being developed initially for hunting, but then being utilised to dominate and kill humans].
Leaving aside animal cruelty concerns, and the threats to bio-diversity, the eating of bush meat ought to be banned outright as being a severe danger to human health.
We need to learn the lessons from inter alia Corona and Ebola viruses. It is not just the participants of this abhorrent practice who are at risk, we all are being exposed to danger as a result of their myopic actions.
Yours sincerely,
Mr. Lalu Hanuman,
Attorney-at-Law,
Dr. Walter Rodney House,
Dover Gardens, Dover,
Christ Church,
Barbados.

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