Health Risks From Bushmeat May Reach U.S. Shores
Pacific News Service, News Feature, Amanda T. Hawn, Posted: Apr 29, 2004
Editor's Note: The devastating ecological effects of hunting chimp, gorilla and antelope for their meat have been reported. Now, new studies suggest that humans who handle or consume "bushmeat" risk contracting several deadly conditions. As the trade in bushmeat expands, Americans may be affected.
Butterflied baby gorilla, smoked chimpanzee hands and feet, cutlets of elephant trunk -- these are just a few of the offerings on display at the bushmeat market in Yaounde, Cameroon's capital. And they may be coming to a store or restaurant near you.
You may not be tempted to try the menu. If you are, consider your health and think twice.
In January, a team of international researchers reported in the journal Science that the Ebola virus could be traced to the handling of infected chimp, gorilla and antelope meat in Central Africa. Similarly, general consensus holds that HIV originated in primates before jumping the species barrier to humans and, according to the findings of an international team of epidemiologists recently published in The Lancet, a suite of related viruses may already be following in its footsteps.
At the same time, conservationists monitoring the scope of the bushmeat trade say it is expanding to the West, and may have already reached American shores.
In 2002, scientists reported that 13 of the 16 primate species most commonly hunted for bushmeat in Cameroon carry simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV), the same virus known as HIV in humans. Now, in the Lancet study, lead scientist Nathan Wolfe warns that simian foamy virus (SFV), a retro-virus similar to SIV, is actively crossing into ape hunters there.
The study tested the blood of 1,100 people from nine villages in Cameroon and found that 10 carried antibodies to SFV. All of the infected individuals reported either hunting or handling wild primates. None of those infected showed symptoms of illness, but researchers say the virus could have a long incubation period and might be capable of mutation.
"Our study is the first to demonstrate that these retro-viruses are actively crossing into people," Wolfe writes.
Bushmeat is already here, experts say.
"The trade has gotten so big that bushmeat can be easily obtained in many communities if you know who is selling it," said Heather Eves of the Bushmeat Crisis Task Force, a consortium of conservation organizations and scientists based in Silver Springs, Md.
U.S. and international media have reported that stores in New York and London serve the illegally smuggled bushmeat to patrons who consider it a delicacy. According to British officials, back-alley restaurants in Europe will cook monkeys "to taste."
Despite the fact that the commercial trade of primate meat is prohibited under international law, officials estimate that 7,500 tons of illegal wild meat are smuggled into the United Kingdom each year. Two thousand monkey noses were confiscated during one airport inspection in Amsterdam. Airport and customs inspectors in Atlanta recently unzipped a woman's bag to find a monkey smoked so thoroughly that federal wildlife agents were unable to identify the species.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife officials estimate they probably see only a small percentage of the bushmeat passing through American airports.
Researchers have been reluctant to raise "outbreak" type alarms in the United States, in part because they don't know how much meat slips through and what diseases it carries when it arrives. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) nonetheless, sound the following unequivocal warning on its Web site:
"Preparation methods such as smoking, salting, or brining may slow down bushmeat's decay, but may not render bushmeat free of infectious agents."
Public health officials at the CDC confirm that such "infectious agents" could include deadly diseases like Ebola and HTLV, an infection that sometimes leads to leukemia.
One in eight of the world's poor depends on wild meat (known as bushmeat in Africa) for food or money. In Cameroon, 60 to 80 percent of the general population's protein comes from rodents, elephants, or primates such as mandrills, gorillas and the common chimp. Primate populations in the region are so endangered by the hunting pressure that scientists warn the next generation of children may live in a world without wild apes.
As multinational logging companies penetrate further into old-growth forests in Central Africa, many scientists fear the trade in bushmeat will grow. Just one isolated camp of 650 loggers (many are larger) consumes roughly 35,000 wild animals per year.
Conservationists differ over how to best halt the bushmeat trade. Some see it as a manifestation of poverty in rural areas, while others stress politics and greed in urban centers.
Trinto Mugango, who works as a biodiversity consultant with the Global Environment Facility and United Nations Development Program in Chad, says reasons for the trade differ from country to country.
"In Cameroon near logging concessions around Dja...loggers would be driving the need to overkill wildlife and great apes. But in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the major forces driving (the hunting) would be supply for the rebels and people who have been displaced by warfare," Mugango says.
Either way, scientists agree that the bushmeat trade is neither sustainable nor healthy. In a time of SARS, avian influenza and Ebola, human and wildlife health can no longer be viewed in isolation of one another. Similarly, in a world of trans-Atlantic travel, African health and American health, it seems, are inextricably linked.
PNS contributor Amanda T. Hawn is an evolutionary biologist and science writer currently living in San Francisco. She has written about wildlife for The Economist and for Sierra Magazine.
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