As Ebola scourges Congo, experts warn of link to eating wild animals

[littlemissmartypants]

Source: AP

The vendors of wild meat at the sprawling Masina Market in the Congolese capital don’t always display their goods openly. Customers must ask for whatever they’re looking for, whether it is a giant swamp rodent or the severed parts of an antelope.

Others occasionally sell in the open, like the women who preside over impossibly large baskets of squirming caterpillars at the market in Kinshasa.

For many in Congo and elsewhere in Central and West Africa wild meat is a craving and a key part of the cultural milieux. Even a disease as punishing as Ebola, currently ravaging a remote part of eastern Congo, has failed to stem demand for wild meat from the Congo Basin, an expansive forested ecosystem sometimes called Earth’s second lung.

The Congo Basin is rich in all kinds of wildlife, from great apes to serpents — both of which are hunted for their meat. One consequence for locals is exposure to zoonotic diseases such as Ebola.

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/ebola-congo-wild-meat-3ef8a5555bce331d1c0f9af50940e028

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KINSHASA, Congo (AP) —
By RODNEY MUHUMUZA
Updated 1:22 AM EDT, May 30, 2026

[Vegan4life]

1. The revenge of the murdered innocents

As Morrisey sang, meat is murder. And not just for the helpless non-humans.

[uppityperson]

2. Education goes slowly regarding reservoirs and spread of ebola.

Distrust of health care providers hurts also. Changing long held cultural practices of food procurement, and dealing with the ill and dead bodies is a slow painful process.