IN Chinese cuisine wild animals of many kinds are eaten as bushmeat along with meat from domesticated animals.

Bushmeat animals are sold alive in wet markets where the customer chooses the one they want and it is slaughtered on the spot.

There is a belief that the meat of stressed animals has a better flavour and the animals are sometimes tortured to achieve this.

A wet market sells different wild species, often caged up together in crowded, dirty conditions. This makes them easy prey for viruses and there are plenty around.

Different animals act as reservoirs for different viruses and this includes the infamous coronaviruses.

In fact, we humans harbour seven strains which intermittently cause mild illnesses such as coughs and colds. Wet markets create a “soup” of viruses and through new combinations a novel mutant can arise, as in the case of the new one we are fighting to control which has developed the ability to “jump” to the human species and cause this pandemic of Covid.

Scientists have worked out that the new virus has had a change in shape of the “spike protein” on its surface so that it has become able to stick to a receptor on human cells.

Then, like all viruses, it penetrates the cell membrane, enters, and tricks the cell into making thousands of copies of itself.

The cell bursts open, releasing the new particles to infect other cells and spread to other people.

This happened in Southern China in 2002 causing the SARS-CoV-1 pandemic which was much smaller than the current SARS-Cov-2. It caused only 8,000 deaths over the eight months it lasted.

That time it is possible the virus crossed from bats into captive civet cats and then jumped to humans.

The SARS-CoV-2 virus causing the current pandemic of Covid-19 is much more infectious than SARS-CoV-1.

Scientists think its spike protein sticks to human cells ten times better.

Next came the MERS coronavirus which was dangerous because it killed one in two infected people causing 11,000 deaths but it had a low infection rate too.

In the 1990s, when the Chinese economy was on its knees and rural Chinese were starving, the eating of bushmeat and live animal trade for traditional Chinese medicine was encouraged by the Government.

Pangolins, also known as spiny anteaters, are the most traded wild animal in the world not just for meat but for their scales said to cure arthritis among other things.

1kg of scales retails at around £2,300.

To catch the pangolins, dogs are used. One method is to club them unconscious, then boil them alive or hold them over a fire to loosen their scales.

Pangolins are thought to have become infected with a coronavirus carried by bats.

They carry their own type of coronavirus and scientists suggest there may have been an accidental exchange of genetic material giving rise to the virus causing this pandemic.

Sooner or later there is certain to be another pandemic unless wet markets are banned and the trade in wild animals made illegal with severe punishment for those who break the law.

By Dr Laurel Spooner